B Cell: Type of white blood cell
B cells are lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell.
Once the B cell is activated, it turns into a plasma cell, and starts producing antibodies. They are a vital part of the adaptive immune system. They have a protein on the B cell's outer surface known as a 'B cell receptor'. This allows a B cell to bind to a specific antigen.
| B cell | |
|---|---|
 The cells of the immune system form cells that remember the pathogen for future infections. | |
| Details | |
| Identifiers | |
| Latin | lymphocytus B |
| MeSH | D001402 |
| FMA | 62869 |
| Anatomical terminology | |
The main functions of B cells are:
- to make antibodies against antigens,
- to perform the role of antigen-presenting cells (APCs),
- to develop into memory B cells after activation by antigen interaction.
Recently, a new, suppressive function of B cells has been discovered.
In mammals, immature B cells are formed in the bone marrow, hence their name.
Note
References
Other websites
- B Cells and T Cells Archived 2010-08-04 at the Wayback Machine
- B Cell Development and Generation of Lymphocyte Diversity Archived 2010-07-02 at the Wayback Machine
- Interactive Animation of B Cell Maturation (requires Flash video software)
This article uses material from the Wikipedia Simple English article B cell, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki Simple English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.