Abstract
The B cell differentiation pathway extends from the most primitive stage represented by the earliest recognisable B cells to the most differentiated plasma cell stage. B cell differentiation may be divided into two phases: antigen-independent and antigen-dependent differentiation. The first detectable step in B cell differentiation is rearrangement of the heavy chain immunoglobulin genes. Rearrangement of immunoglobulin genes is the physical basis of the generation of antibody diversity, incorporating the somatic mutation predicted by Burnet (1959).
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Forbes, I.J., Leong, A.SY. (1987). B Cell Differentiation. In: Essential Oncology of the Lymphocyte. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-1467-3_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-1467-3_11
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