SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-based vaccines are about 95% effective in preventing COVID-19
. The dynamics of antibody-secreting plasmablasts and germinal centre B cells induced by these vaccines in humans remain ...unclear. Here we examined antigen-specific B cell responses in peripheral blood (n = 41) and draining lymph nodes in 14 individuals who had received 2 doses of BNT162b2, an mRNA-based vaccine that encodes the full-length SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) gene
. Circulating IgG- and IgA-secreting plasmablasts that target the S protein peaked one week after the second immunization and then declined, becoming undetectable three weeks later. These plasmablast responses preceded maximal levels of serum anti-S binding and neutralizing antibodies to an early circulating SARS-CoV-2 strain as well as emerging variants, especially in individuals who had previously been infected with SARS-CoV-2 (who produced the most robust serological responses). By examining fine needle aspirates of draining axillary lymph nodes, we identified germinal centre B cells that bound S protein in all participants who were sampled after primary immunization. High frequencies of S-binding germinal centre B cells and plasmablasts were sustained in these draining lymph nodes for at least 12 weeks after the booster immunization. S-binding monoclonal antibodies derived from germinal centre B cells predominantly targeted the receptor-binding domain of the S protein, and fewer clones bound to the N-terminal domain or to epitopes shared with the S proteins of the human betacoronaviruses OC43 and HKU1. These latter cross-reactive B cell clones had higher levels of somatic hypermutation as compared to those that recognized only the SARS-CoV-2 S protein, which suggests a memory B cell origin. Our studies demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-based vaccination of humans induces a persistent germinal centre B cell response, which enables the generation of robust humoral immunity.
B cell clonal expansion is vital for adaptive immunity. High-throughput BCR sequencing enables investigating this process but requires computational inference to identify clonal relationships. This ...inference usually relies on only the BCR H chain, as most current protocols do not preserve H:L chain pairing. The extent to which paired L chains aids inference is unknown. Using human single-cell paired BCR datasets, we assessed the ability of H chain-based clonal clustering to identify clones. Of the expanded clones identified, <20% grouped cells expressing inconsistent L chains. H chains from these misclustered clones contained more distant junction sequences and shared fewer V segment mutations than the accurate clones. This suggests that additional H chain information could be leveraged to refine clonal relationships. Conversely, L chains were insufficient to refine H chain-based clonal clusters. Overall, the BCR H chain alone is sufficient to identify clonal relationships with confidence.
In order to produce effective antibodies, B cells undergo rapid somatic hypermutation (SHM) and selection for binding affinity to antigen via a process called affinity maturation. The similarities ...between this process and evolution by natural selection have led many groups to use phylogenetic methods to characterize the development of immunological memory, vaccination, and other processes that depend on affinity maturation. However, these applications are limited by the fact that most phylogenetic models are designed to be applied to individual lineages comprising genetically diverse sequences, while B cell repertoires often consist of hundreds to thousands of separate low-diversity lineages. Further, several features of affinity maturation violate important assumptions in standard phylogenetic models. Here, we introduce a hierarchical phylogenetic framework that integrates information from all lineages in a repertoire to more precisely estimate model parameters while simultaneously incorporating the unique features of SHM. We demonstrate the power of this repertoire-wide approach by characterizing previously undescribed phenomena in affinity maturation. First, we find evidence consistent with age-related changes in SHM hot-spot targeting. Second, we identify a consistent relationship between increased tree length and signs of increased negative selection, apparent in the repertoires of recently vaccinated subjects and those without any known recent infections or vaccinations. This suggests that B cell lineages shift toward negative selection over time as a general feature of affinity maturation. Our study provides a framework for undertaking repertoire-wide phylogenetic testing of SHM hypotheses and provides a means of characterizing dynamics of mutation and selection during affinity maturation.
Germinal centres (GC) are lymphoid structures in which B cells acquire affinity-enhancing somatic hypermutations (SHM), with surviving clones differentiating into memory B cells (MBCs) and long-lived ...bone marrow plasma cells
(BMPCs). SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination induces a persistent GC response that lasts for at least six months in humans
. The fate of responding GC B cells as well as the functional consequences of such persistence remain unknown. Here, we detected SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-specific MBCs in 42 individuals who had received two doses of the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 six month earlier. Spike-specific IgG-secreting BMPCs were detected in 9 out of 11 participants. Using a combined approach of sequencing the B cell receptors of responding blood plasmablasts and MBCs, lymph node GC B cells and plasma cells and BMPCs from eight individuals and expression of the corresponding monoclonal antibodies, we tracked the evolution of 1,540 spike-specific B cell clones. On average, early blood spike-specific plasmablasts exhibited the lowest SHM frequencies. By contrast, SHM frequencies of spike-specific GC B cells increased by 3.5-fold within six months after vaccination. Spike-specific MBCs and BMPCs accumulated high levels of SHM, which corresponded with enhanced anti-spike antibody avidity in blood and enhanced affinity as well as neutralization capacity of BMPC-derived monoclonal antibodies. We report how the notable persistence of the GC reaction induced by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination in humans culminates in affinity-matured long-term antibody responses that potently neutralize the virus.
In this study we profiled vaccine-induced polyclonal antibodies as well as plasmablast-derived mAbs from individuals who received SARS-CoV-2 spike mRNA vaccine. Polyclonal antibody responses in ...vaccinees were robust and comparable to or exceeded those seen after natural infection. However, the ratio of binding to neutralizing antibodies after vaccination was greater than that after natural infection and, at the monoclonal level, we found that the majority of vaccine-induced antibodies did not have neutralizing activity. We also found a co-dominance of mAbs targeting the NTD and RBD of SARS-CoV-2 spike and an original antigenic-sin like backboost to spikes of seasonal human coronaviruses OC43 and HKU1. Neutralizing activity of NTD mAbs but not RBD mAbs against a clinical viral isolate carrying E484K as well as extensive changes in the NTD was abolished, suggesting that a proportion of vaccine-induced RBD binding antibodies may provide substantial protection against viral variants carrying single E484K RBD mutations.
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•Antibody responses after SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination target RBD, NTD, and S2•SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination induces a high rate of non-neutralizing antibodies•Crossreactive antibodies to seasonal β-coronaviruses are induced by vaccination•Variant mutation N501Y enhances affinity to human ACE2 while E484K reduces it
An analysis of mRNA vaccine-induced polyclonal antibodies and plasmablast-derived monoclonal antibodies from individuals vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 identifies a high proportion of non-neutralizing antibodies and the induction of cross-reactive antibodies to seasonal coronaviruses and also maps the regions in the spike protein that are targeted, even among viral variants.
Influenza viruses remain a major public health threat. Seasonal influenza vaccination in humans primarily stimulates pre-existing memory B cells, which differentiate into a transient wave of ...circulating antibody-secreting plasmablasts
. This recall response contributes to 'original antigenic sin'-the selective increase of antibody species elicited by previous exposures to influenza virus antigens
. It remains unclear whether such vaccination can also induce germinal centre reactions in the draining lymph nodes, where diversification and maturation of recruited B cells can occur
. Here we used ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration to serially sample the draining lymph nodes and investigate the dynamics and specificity of germinal centre B cell responses after influenza vaccination in humans. Germinal centre B cells that bind to influenza vaccine could be detected as early as one week after vaccination. In three out of eight participants, we detected vaccine-binding germinal centre B cells up to nine weeks after vaccination. Between 12% and 88% of the responding germinal centre B cell clones overlapped with B cells detected among early circulating plasmablasts. These shared B cell clones had high frequencies of somatic hypermutation and encoded broadly cross-reactive monoclonal antibodies. By contrast, vaccine-induced B cell clones detected only in the germinal centre compartment exhibited significantly lower frequencies of somatic hypermutation and predominantly encoded strain-specific monoclonal antibodies, which suggests a naive B cell origin. Some of these strain-specific monoclonal antibodies recognized epitopes that were not targeted by the early plasmablast response. Thus, influenza virus vaccination in humans can elicit a germinal centre reaction that recruits B cell clones that can target new epitopes, thereby broadening the spectrum of vaccine-induced protective antibodies.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is responsible for millions of infections and hundreds of thousands of deaths globally. There are no widely available licensed ...therapeutics against SARS-CoV-2, highlighting an urgent need for effective interventions. The virus enters host cells through binding of a receptor-binding domain within its trimeric spike glycoprotein to human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2. In this article, we describe the generation and characterization of a panel of murine mAbs directed against the receptor-binding domain. One mAb, 2B04, neutralized wild-type SARS-CoV-2 in vitro with remarkable potency (half-maximal inhibitory concentration of <2 ng/ml). In a murine model of SARS-CoV-2 infection, 2B04 protected challenged animals from weight loss, reduced lung viral load, and blocked systemic dissemination. Thus, 2B04 is a promising candidate for an effective antiviral that can be used to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Somatic hypermutation (SHM) generates much of the Ab diversity necessary for affinity maturation and effective humoral immunity. The activation-induced cytidine deaminase-induced DNA lesions and ...error-prone repair that underlie SHM are known to exhibit intrinsic biases when targeting the Ig sequences. Computational models for SHM targeting often model the targeting probability of a nucleotide in a motif-based fashion, assuming that the same DNA motif is equally likely to be targeted regardless of its position along the Ig sequence. The validity of this assumption, however, has not been rigorously studied in vivo. In this study, by analyzing a large collection of 956,157 human Ig sequences while controlling for the confounding influence of selection, we show that the likelihood of a DNA 5-mer motif being targeted by SHM is not the same at different positions in the same Ig sequence. We found position-dependent differential SHM targeting for about three quarters of the 38 and 269 unique motifs from more than half of the 292 and 1912 motif-allele pairs analyzed using productive and nonproductive Ig sequences, respectively. The direction of the differential SHM targeting was largely conserved across individuals with no allele-specific effect within an IgH variable gene family, but was not consistent with general decay of SHM targeting with increasing distance from the transcription start site. However, SHM targeting did correlate positively with the mutability of the wider sequence neighborhood surrounding the motif. These findings provide insights and future directions for computational efforts toward modeling SHM.
Human memory B cells and marginal zone (MZ) B cells share common features such as the expression of CD27 and somatic mutations in their IGHV and BCL6 genes, but the relationship between them is ...controversial. Here, we show phenotypic progression within lymphoid tissues as MZ B cells emerge from the mature naïve B cell pool via a precursor CD27
CD45RB
population distant from memory cells. By imaging mass cytometry, we find that MZ B cells and memory B cells occupy different microanatomical niches in organised gut lymphoid tissues. Both populations disseminate widely between distant lymphoid tissues and blood, and both diversify their IGHV repertoire in gut germinal centres (GC), but nevertheless remain largely clonally separate. MZ B cells are therefore not developmentally contiguous with or analogous to classical memory B cells despite their shared ability to transit through GC, where somatic mutations are acquired.
Reciprocal copy-number variation (CNV) of a 593 kb region of 16p11.2 is a common genetic cause of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet it is not completely penetrant and can manifest in a wide array ...of phenotypes. To explore its molecular consequences, we performed RNA sequencing of cerebral cortex from mouse models with CNV of the syntenic 7qF3 region and lymphoblast lines from 34 members of 7 multiplex ASD-affected families harboring the 16p11.2 CNV. Expression of all genes in the CNV region correlated well with their DNA copy number, with no evidence of dosage compensation. We observed effects on gene expression outside the CNV region, including apparent positional effects in cis and in trans at genomic segments with evidence of physical interaction in Hi-C chromosome conformation data. One of the most significant positional effects was telomeric to the 16p11.2 CNV and includes the previously described “distal” 16p11.2 microdeletion. Overall, 16p11.2 CNV was associated with altered expression of genes and networks that converge on multiple hypotheses of ASD pathogenesis, including synaptic function (e.g., NRXN1, NRXN3), chromatin modification (e.g., CHD8, EHMT1, MECP2), transcriptional regulation (e.g., TCF4, SATB2), and intellectual disability (e.g., FMR1, CEP290). However, there were differences between tissues and species, with the strongest effects being consistently within the CNV region itself. Our analyses suggest that through a combination of indirect regulatory effects and direct effects on nuclear architecture, alteration of 16p11.2 genes disrupts expression networks that involve other genes and pathways known to contribute to ASD, suggesting an overlap in mechanisms of pathogenesis.
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