Understanding why the immune system is depressed during spaceflight is of obvious importance for future human deep-space missions, such as the foreseen missions to Mars. However, little is known about the effects of these flights on humoral immunity. We previously immunized adult Pleurodeles waltl (urodele amphibian) onboard the Mir space station and showed that heavy-chain variable (VH) domains of specific IgM antibodies are encoded by genes belonging to the VHII and VHVI families. We have now determined how these animals use their individual VHII and VHVI genes by screening IgM heavy-chain cDNA libraries and by quantifying IgM heavy-chain transcripts encoded by these genes. Results were compared with those obtained using control animals immunized on Earth under the same conditions as onboard Mir. Our experiments revealed an increase in the expression of IgM heavy-chain mRNAs encoded by the VHII and VHVI.C genes and a strong decrease in the expression of IgM heavy-chain mRNAs encoded by the VHVI.A and VHVI.B genes in spaceflight animals. Consequently, different heavy-chain mRNAs are expressed by spaceflight animals, demonstrating that this environment affects the humoral response. These observations may be due to a change in B-cell selection under spaceflight conditions.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1096/fj.08-121327 | DOI Listing |
Front Immunol
January 2025
State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, Guangdong Laboratory of Computational Biomedicine, Center for Cell Lineage Research, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
Background: Although immunoglobulin (Ig) alleles play a pivotal role in the antibody response to pathogens, research to understand their role in the humoral immune response is still limited.
Methods: We retrieved the germline sequences for the IGHV from the IMGT database to illustrate the amino acid polymorphism present within germline sequences of IGHV genes. We aassembled the sequences of IgM and IgD repertoire from 130 people to investigate the genetic variations in the population.
Arch Pathol Lab Med
January 2025
the Department of Pathology, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles (Petersen, Stuart, He, Ju, Ghezavati, Siddiqi, Wang).
Context.—: The co-occurrence of plasma cell neoplasm (PCN) and lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma (LPL) is rare, and their clonal relationship remains unclear.
Objective.
Acta Crystallogr F Struct Biol Commun
January 2025
Unité de Glycobiologie Structurale et Fonctionnelle (UGSF), UMR 8576 CNRS and University of Lille, Villeneuve d'Ascq, France.
Monoclonal antibodies recognizing nonprotein antigens remain largely underrepresented in our understanding of the molecular repertoire of innate and adaptive immunity. One such antibody is Mannitou, a murine IgM that recognizes paucimannosidic glycans. In this work, we report the production and purification of the recombinant antigen-binding fragment (Fab) of Mannitou IgM (Mannitou Fab) and employ a combination of biochemical and biophysical approaches to obtain its initial structural characterization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHistopathology
December 2024
Pathology Department, CHU de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France.
Unlabelled: The B cell antigen receptor (BCR) complex, comprised of antigen recognition and signaling components, functions in initiating B cell activation. While structural studies have described BCR domain organization, gaps remain in our understanding of its antigen binding domain (Fab, fragment antigen-binding) disposition, and how antigen binding is sensed to initiate signaling. Here, we report antigen affinity and signaling of the immunoglobulin (Ig) class IgM and IgG BCRs and define conformational states of full-length BCRs of two human broadly neutralizing antibodies, the glycan-specific, heavy chain domain-swapped, I-shaped 2G12, and a canonical Y-shaped antibody, CH31, that recognizes the CD4-binding site on the HIV-1 Envelope protein (Env).
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