Dynamics of memory B cells and plasmablasts in healthy individuals

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Mazzolini, Andrea, Walczak, Aleksandra M., Mora, Thierry
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Mazzolini, Andrea
Walczak, Aleksandra M.
Mora, Thierry
author_facet Mazzolini, Andrea
Walczak, Aleksandra M.
Mora, Thierry
contents Our adaptive immune system relies on the persistence over long times of a diverse set of antigen-experienced B cells to encode our memories of past infections and to protect us against future ones. While longitudinal repertoire sequencing promises to track the long-term dynamics of many B cell clones simultaneously, sampling and experimental noise make it hard to draw reliable quantitative conclusions. Leveraging statistical inference, we infer the dynamics of memory B cell clonal dynamics and conversion to plasmablasts, which includes clone creation, degradation, abundance fluctuations, and differentiation. We find that memory B cell clones degrade slowly, with a half-life of 10 years. Based on the inferred parameters, we predict that it takes about 50 years to renew 50\% of the repertoire, with most observed clones surviving for a lifetime. We infer that, on average, 1 out of 100 memory B cells differentiates into a plasmablast each year, more than expected from purely antigen-stimulated differentiation, and that plasmablast clones degrade with a half-life of about one year in the absence of memory imports. Our method is general and could be applied to other longitudinal repertoire sequencing B cell subsets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_02812
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dynamics of memory B cells and plasmablasts in healthy individuals
Mazzolini, Andrea
Walczak, Aleksandra M.
Mora, Thierry
Populations and Evolution
Our adaptive immune system relies on the persistence over long times of a diverse set of antigen-experienced B cells to encode our memories of past infections and to protect us against future ones. While longitudinal repertoire sequencing promises to track the long-term dynamics of many B cell clones simultaneously, sampling and experimental noise make it hard to draw reliable quantitative conclusions. Leveraging statistical inference, we infer the dynamics of memory B cell clonal dynamics and conversion to plasmablasts, which includes clone creation, degradation, abundance fluctuations, and differentiation. We find that memory B cell clones degrade slowly, with a half-life of 10 years. Based on the inferred parameters, we predict that it takes about 50 years to renew 50\% of the repertoire, with most observed clones surviving for a lifetime. We infer that, on average, 1 out of 100 memory B cells differentiates into a plasmablast each year, more than expected from purely antigen-stimulated differentiation, and that plasmablast clones degrade with a half-life of about one year in the absence of memory imports. Our method is general and could be applied to other longitudinal repertoire sequencing B cell subsets.
title Dynamics of memory B cells and plasmablasts in healthy individuals
topic Populations and Evolution
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02812