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Affinity maturation during the germinal center reaction (779 words) |
 | The term affinity maturation is simply used to describe the observation that the affinity of the antibodies that bind a given antigen at the end of the immune response is higher than the affinity of the antibodies that first reacted to this antigen. |
| They then performed an optimal control study of affinity maturation in the GC, with the mutation rate being the control variable, and concluded that cycles of mutation-less proliferation followed by mutation and selection, are the most efficient way of creating a memory population with a high average affinity. |
| Affinity maturation was achieved with repeated movement between dark and light zones. |
| F. Nina Papavasiliou (356 words) |
| Fine tuning of the affinity of a particular antibody to a particular antigen is driven by a process called somatic hypermutation. |
| Successive cycles of mutation and selection lead to the generation of B cells with very high affinity antibodies, a process known as affinity maturation. |
| As it is a highly mutagenic process, somatic hypermutation must be spatially and temporally regulated, but what targets it to the appropriate areas of the genome at the right time remains unknown and is of great interest to our lab. |
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