B-cell selection and tolerance

G J Nossal1

  • 1Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

The B-lymphocyte repertoire can be divided into a primary repertoire of virgin B cells and a secondary repertoire of antigenically experienced cells. Self-tolerance requires that neither of these repertoires contains potentially active cells capable of high-affinity, anti-self antibody production. Recent work has proven that both the primary and the secondary repertoire can be functionally purged, and this mechanism may involve failure of appearance of anti-self clonotypes (clonal abortion) or defects in activation (clonal anergy).