The pre-B-cell receptor

Inga-Lill Mårtensson1, Rebecca A Keenan, Steve Licence

  • 1Laboratory of Lymphocyte Signaling and Development, The Babraham Institute, The Babraham Campus, Cambridge CB2 4AT, United Kingdom. lill.martensson@bbsrc.ac.uk <lill.martensson@bbsrc.ac.uk>

The pre-B-cell receptor (pre-BCR) is composed of two immunoglobulin mu heavy chains and two surrogate light chains, which associate with the signaling molecules Igalpha and Igbeta (Igalpha/beta). The production of a functional pre-BCR is the first checkpoint in the current model of B-cell development. The pre-BCR mediates signals resulting in heavy chain allelic exclusion, down-regulation of the recombination machinery, developmental progression, V(H) repertoire selection, proliferation and down-regulation of the surrogate light chain genes. Recent studies suggest that some of these processes could take place at an earlier stage in B-cell development than previously thought, and might not result from signals mediated by the pre-BCR.

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