In vivo imaging studies shed light on germinal-centre development

Affinity maturation of antibodies during the course of an adaptive immune response requires germinal centre (GC) formation within B-cell follicles. Much of the current understanding of GC function has been derived from histology, but these static views have left unresolved many questions about cell movement in GCs. In this Progress article, we describe how several recent studies using time-resolved multiphoton microscopy to track GC B-cell movement within lymph nodes have shed light on the processes that influence GC B-cell dynamics.