The latest publication from our lab, “Two subsets of human marginal zone B cells resolved by global analysis of lymphoid tissues and blood“, is out now in Science Immunology!

Led by Dr Jacqueline Siu and supervised by Prof Jo Spencer and Dr Gavin Pettigrew, we use analysis of gut-associated lymphoid tissue, mesenteric lymph node, and spleen tissues from diseased human transplant donors to show that CD27⁺IgM⁺ unswitched B cells differed mostly between tissues. We identified two distinct MZ populations were identified among the cells, which differed in their expression levels of BAFFR, CD24, CCR7, and CD27. RNA-Seq data from the tissues also identified two MZ-like B cell populations with similar characteristics, and also revealed that MZB-1 showed higher mutation levels than MZB-2 cells. RNA-Seq was also used to compare blood B cells from lupus patients and healthy donors, which again clustered MZ-like B cells into two populations that differed in mutation frequency in their V regions. SLE patients lacked MZB-1 cells and this was confirmed by flow cytometry.

Read the paper here.