Xin Gao, Qian Shen, Jonathan A Roco, Becan Dalton, Katie Frith, C Mee Ling Munier, Fiona D Ballard, Ke Wang, Hannah G Kelly, Maxim Nekrasov, Jin-Shu He, Rebecca Jaeger, Patricia Carreira, Julia I Ellyard, Lynette Beattie, Anselm Enders, Matthew C Cook, John J Zaunders, Ian A Cockburn
CD11c+ atypical B cells (ABCs) are an alternative memory B cell lineage associated with immunization, infection, and autoimmunity. However, the factors that drive the transcriptional program of ABCs have not been identified, and the function of this population remains incompletely understood. Here we identified candidate transcription factors associated with the ABC population based on a human tonsillar B cell single cell dataset. We identified CD11c+ B cells in mice with a similar transcriptomic signature to human ABCs, and using an optimized CRISPR-Cas9 knockdown screen, we observed that loss of zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 2 (Zeb2) impaired ABC formation...
February 8, 2024: Science Immunology