A new study tracking thousands of B cells across more than 100 germinal centers in mice reveals how the system consistently produces highly effective antibodies. The findings overturn longstanding ...

The germinal centre (GC) of lymphoid organs is the microenvironment in which antigen-activated B cells diversify their immunoglobulin genes by somatic hypermutation (SHM) to generate high-affinity ...

If B cells are the munitions factories of the immune system, manufacturing antibodies to neutralize harmful pathogens, then the tiny biological structures known as germinal centers are its ...

Germinal centers are high-speed evolution machines. Tiny clusters in the lymph nodes, germinal centers refine antibodies through mutation and expansion until they produce high-affinity B cells adapted ...

A diverse immune response hinges on naive B cells mingling with high affinity ones in the late-stage germinal center. Whether that helps or hinders, however, depends on the virus. Cells jostling for a ...

Ruth Scurr on one of Zola's greatest novels, a parable of the love-hate relationship that human beings have with the Earth Emile Zola's monumental Germinal was published in 1885: the year Freud ...