When MZ B cells were incubated with medium that neutrophils grew in (but which l

Question

When MZ B cells were incubated with medium that neutrophils grew in (but which lacked cells), the amount of mRNA from the activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) gene was measured by RT-PCR in the MZ B cells, as shown below. NBH denotes neutrophil medium, and Ctrl denotes control medium without neutrophils.

1. What does this experiment tell you about the interactions between these two cells?

2. Why do you think the researchers are measuring AID gene expression?

Furthermore, the experiment above was repeated where MZ B cells were cultured with medium that neutrophils grew in, and blocking antibodies generated against BAFF, TACI, or IL-21 were added (denoted by the suffix “-Ig”) or control non-specific antibodies were added (denoted by “Ig”).

3. What major conclusions can you draw from these experiments?

4. Predict the effect that a blocking antibody (antagonist) to CD40 would have in this same experimental set up as above.  

Explanation / Answer

1. The experiments is using two cell lines-

MZ B cells or marginal zone B-cells are a small subest of B-cells which do not travel but stay in the marginal zone of the spleen along with other cells such as dendritic cell, neutrophil etc.

Neutrophils are a type of granoluctyes which are major phagocytes in the body. Now, apart from being phagocytes, neutrophil is also being found as a major immunomodulator.

in the experiment, MZ B cells are grown in a medium containing Neutrophils and in another media containing no neutrophile.MZ B cells grown in Neutrophil media shows increased expression of AID.

Conclusion- the neutrophiles are inducing the production of AID in the MZ B cells. it could be due to some cytokine being released in the medium by neutrophil or because of a direct interaction of both the cells.

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