Abstract
In this Opinion article, I address the role of the pre-B-cell receptor (pre-BCR) in the development of antigen-specific B cells in terms of immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) variable-region repertoire selection, precursor B-cell differentiation and proliferation, and IgH allelic exclusion. Comparisons with the role of the pre-T-cell receptor (pre-TCR) in T-cell development raise provocative questions. Why do B- and T-cell lineages both use a surrogate chain — the surrogate light chain and the pre-TCR α-chain, respectively — as a step to develop their repertoires of antigen-recognizing cells? What are the functions of the pre-BCR and pre-TCR in lymphocyte differentiation and antigen-receptor allelic exclusion? This article, together with the accompanying article by Harald von Boehmer, hopes to answer some of these questions.
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F.M. is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
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Melchers, F. The pre-B-cell receptor: selector of fitting immunoglobulin heavy chains for the B-cell repertoire. Nat Rev Immunol 5, 578–584 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nri1649
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nri1649
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