A type of antibody long thought to have a minor role in immune system memory may actually be a key player, new findings suggest. Researchers tracked the antibody's function by imaging the immune system's B cells in the act of responding to a pathogen and developing into memory B cells, which can recognize an infectious agent years after first encountering it, they report in a study published online yesterday (October 25) in Nature Immunology.
B cell and memory B cell reacting to a virus
Image: wikipedia
"I find this paper to be extremely interesting," said linkurl:Wenxia Song,;http://www.life.umd.edu/grad/mocb/faculty/song.html a professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the research. "The role of B cell memory is controversial. Now we can track B cell function in a way that has never been done before." The B cells' principal function is to make...



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