"This effect is based on a step in antibody maturation called somatic hypermutation," says Dr. Matthias Bruhn, first author of the study and postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for ...

A recent paper in Nature sheds welcome light on the mechanism of somatic hypermutation by documenting the participation of double-strand DNA breaks. The antibody response, which occurs in ...

Activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) plays a crucial role in the immune system by facilitating somatic hypermutation (SHM) and class switch recombination (CSR) in B cells. These processes ...

Only productive and functional IG rearrangements are retained in B-cells. IGH gene rearrangements in B-cells undergo additional somatic mutations on exposure to antigen as part of the germinal center ...