Two gene-targeted immunoglobulin heavy chain transgenic mouse strains, TgH(KL25) and TgH(VI10), expressing neutralizing specificities for lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus and vesicular stomatitis virus, respectively, have been generated. Three days after lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus infection, TgH(KL25) mice showed a thymus-independent neutralizing IgM response followed by thymus-depend...

Chronic virus infection leads to the functional impairment of dendritic cells (DCs) as well as T cells, limiting the clinical usefulness of DC-based therapeutic vaccine against chronic virus infection. Meanwhile, B cells have been known to maintain the ability to differentiate plasma cells producing antibodies even during chronic virus infection. Previously, α-galactosylceramide (αGC) and cogna...

Despite the production of neutralizing antibodies to hepatitis C virus (HCV), many patients fail to clear the virus and instead develop chronic infection and long-term complications. To understand how HCV infection perturbs the antibody repertoire and to identify molecular features of antibody genes associated with either viral clearance or chronic infection, we sequenced the V(D)J region of na...

BACKGROUND Fifty-five percent of individuals with HLA-B*57:01 exposed to the antiretroviral drug abacavir develop a hypersensitivity reaction (HSR) that has been attributed to naïve T-cell responses to neo-antigen generated by the drug. Immunologically confirmed abacavir HSR can manifest clinically in less than 48 hours following first exposure suggesting that, at least in some cases, abacavir ...

Infection elicits CD4(+) memory T lymphocytes that participate in protective immunity. Although memory cells are the progeny of naïve T cells, it is unclear that all naïve cells from a polyclonal repertoire have memory cell potential. Using a single-cell adoptive transfer and spleen biopsy method, we found that in mice, essentially all microbe-specific naïve cells produced memory cells during i...

BACKGROUND The regulation and function of IgE in healthy individuals and in antigen-naïve animals is not well understood. IL-33 administration increases serum IgE in mice with unknown mechanism. We tested the hypothesis that IL-33 provides an antigen-independent stimulus for IgE production and mast cell degranulation. METHODS IL-33 was administered to naïve wild-type (WT), nude and ST2(-/-) ,...

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a malignancy of B CD5+cells and is the most common type of leukemia in adults. The disease is more common in men over 50 years in western countries. CLL is associated with defective apoptosis in B cells. CLL was traditionally regarded as a disease that occurs before naïve B cells meet the antigen in the lymph nodes. Laboratory diagnosis requires white blood...

DNA methylation levels vary markedly by cell-type makeup of a sample. Understanding these differences and estimating the cell-type makeup of a sample is an important aspect of studying DNA methylation. DNA from leukocytes in whole blood is simple to obtain and pervasive in research. However, leukocytes contain many distinct cell types and subtypes. We propose a two-stage model that estimates th...