At the surface, the immune response to a flu virus is simple. Some cells recognize the pathogen and send a signal to the ...

The germinal centers that form in the body's lymph nodes work as a fitness boot camp in which B cells evolve to produce antibodies of increasingly higher affinity to an invading pathogen. This new ...

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 weapons ...

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.

An absence of germinal centers—which arise during infections to produce long-lived antibody-generating cells—might explain rapidly waning antibody levels in the disease.

New imaging reveals a built-in safeguard that allows B cell populations to rapidly expand in germinal centers without introducing deleterious mutations.

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 ...

Understanding the ways our immune response changes as we age holds the key to designing better vaccines and boosting protection for people most at risk.

Germinal centers are transient structures in the lymph nodes where antibody-producing B cells proliferate and differentiate at extraordinary rates. Germinal centers can be visually divided into a ...

The germinal centers that form in the body's lymph nodes work as a fitness boot camp in which B cells evolve to produce antibodies of increasingly higher affinity to an invading pathogen. This new ...

Germinal center (GC) dark and light zones segregate cells undergoing somatic hypermutation and antigen-driven selection, respectively, yet the factors guiding this organization are unknown.