The production of antibodies is essential to protect us from infection and forms the basis for most vaccine programs. Plasma cells are the end stage of the B cell lineage and are the sole source of antibodies. However, excess production of antibodies and plasma cells is associated with a wide range of diseases of immune health, including autoimmunity and allergy. The B cell to plasma cell transition involves a stereotypical program of cell activation and proliferation that requires a small network of regulatory proteins acting in step with cell division, fate timers and the stochastic regulation of gene expression to control the rate of differentiation.
This project aims to explore this system with advanced cell culture techniques, flow cytometry and genomics to develop cellular and mathematical models to describe the molecular and cellular steps that lead to differentiation of B cells into plasma cells at a controllable rate. We aim to better understand the differentiation process in both B cells from healthy donors, as well as to investigate the alterations in the gene regulatory networks that are present in patients with diseases of the immune system like immunodeficiency or lupus.
