Poster Presentation Australasian Society for Immunology Annual Scientific Meeting 2014

Circulating human CD27-IgA+ memory B cells recognize bacteria with polyreactive immunoglobulins (#350)

Magdalena A. Berkowska 1 , Jean-Nicolas Schickel 2 , Christina Grosserichter-Wagener 1 , Dick de Ridder 3 , Yen-Shing Ng 2 , Jacques J.M. van Dongen 1 , Eric Meffre 2 , Menno C. van Zelm 1
  1. Immunology, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
  2. Immunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
  3. Mathematics and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

The vast majority of immunoglobulin (Ig)A production occurs in mucosal tissue following T-cell dependent and T-cell independent antigen responses. To study the nature of each of these responses, we analyzed the gene expression and Ig reactivity profiles of T-cell dependent CD27+IgA+ and T-cell independent CD27-IgA+ circulating memory B cells. Gene expression profiles of IgA+ subsets were highly similar to each other and to IgG+ memory B-cell subsets with typical upregulation of activation markers and downregulation of inhibitory receptors. However, we identified mucosa-associated CCR9 and RUNX2 genes specifically upregulated in CD27-IgA+ B cells. We also found that CD27-IgA+ B cells expressed antibodies with distinct Ig repertoire and reactivity than those from CD27+IgA+ B cells. Indeed, antibodies from CD27-IgA+ B cells were weakly mutated, often utilized the Igλ light chain and were enriched in polyreactive clones recognizing various bacterial species. Hence, T-cell independent IgA responses are likely involved in the maintenance of gut homeostasis through the production of polyreactive mutated IgA antibodies with crossreactive anti-commensal reactivity.