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Science 23 February 2001:
Vol. 291. no. 5508, p. 1443
DOI: 10.1126/science.291.5508.1443f
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This Week in Science
Expression of self-reactive receptors by B lymphocytes generally leads to their demise through clonal deletion, yet some B cells appear to escape death by swapping their existing receptors for less dangerous ones. This process of receptor editing was first revealed through the transgenic expression of self-reactive receptor chains, which artificially forced some cells to express new receptors. However, these studies could not predict the extent to which this process contributed to the B cell repertoire. By tagging one of the antibody loci in mice with a human version of the light chain k gene, Casellas et al. (p. 1541; see the Perspective by King and Monroe) tracked which cells might undergo receptor editing during normal development. The results of these experiments suggest that revision of receptor specificity by B cell may be much more frequent than previously predicted.
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)
