Comparable heavy and light chain pairings in normal and systemic lupus erythematosus IgG(+) B cells

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease that is charact erized by the presence of high immunoglobulin serum titers, but the mechani sm by which these arise remains unclear. It has been suggested that the dis ease is associated with specific antibody features, including variable gene use, the presence of charged complementarity-determining region residues a nd/or an aberrant process of secondary light chain rearrangement. To study this in more detail, we compared variable, diversity and joining gene segme nt use, somatic mutation, and heavy and light chain pairings in single peri pheral IgG(+) B cells between one normal (209 B cells) and two SLE (156 B c ells) donors. In contrast to others, we found no systematic differences, in dicating that the memory B cell repertoires in normal and SLE donors are sh aped in a similar way.