B- cells of the immune system Specialization of B-cells to produce different antibodies is done by alteration of the sequence of nucleotides in the DNA of parent cells. During development; the cells that will become the B cells in the immune system undergo a scrambling of the DNA in those regions of the DNA that will eventually give rise to the variable parts of the antibodies produced by the immune system. As these cells are dividing during a certain brief phase of embryonic development, the DNA in these regions gets rearranged and different cells end up having different combinations of regions of DNA. Once this brief phase is finished the cells will continue to divide but the resulting daughter cells from a particular cell are identical to each other but not cells arising from parents with different combinations of genes. The result is literally thousands of clones of antibody producing cells, each clone producing a different antibody.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 10:22:54 +0000
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