Each lymphocyte bears receptors that bind to a specific antigen.
Each lymphocyte produces its own specific receptor, which is structurally organized so that it responds to a different antigen.
As each lymphocyte matures, these gene segments are pieced together to form one gene for each polypeptide that makes up a specific antigen receptor.
Although they have only a small amount of cytoplasm compared with other cells, each lymphocyte has sufficient cytoplasmic organelles (small functional units such as mitochondria, the endoplasmic reticulum, and a Golgi apparatus) to keep the cell alive.
The essential components for generating an antibody response include B and T cell recognition of antigen, subsequent activation, clonal expansion of each lymphocyte type and migration of T cells into B cell follicles to provide help, all leading to germinal centre formation and antibody production.
Burnet proposed that each lymphocyte bears on its surface specific immunoglobulins reflecting the specificity of the antibody that will later be synthesised once the cell is activated by an antigen.
The proportions (% of total events acquired) of each lymphocyte type were calculated after acquisition on a FACSCalibur machine.
To do this, we first measured the absolute numbers of each lymphocyte subset, calculated from the percentage of each subset within the lymphocyte population by conventional immunophenotyping and the total lymphocyte count from the hematological analyzer.
While our experiments so far show the proportion of lymphocytes in each subset producing IFNγ, we wanted to determine the absolute numbers of IFNγ-producing cells for each lymphocyte subset in peripheral blood.
Given the significant under-expression of genes related to these cell populations observed in the modular analysis (M1.3, M2.1, M2.8), further detailed flow analysis was performed in each lymphocyte compartment.
