The human CD77(-) B cell population represents a heterogeneous subset of cells comprising centroblasts, centrocytes, and plasmablasts, prompting phenotypical revision
The process of becoming an Ig-producing plasma cell takes the mature B cell through the germinal center, where Ig genes are diversified through somatic hypermutation and class switch recombination. To more clearly define functional characteristics of the germinal center dark zone centroblasts and the light zone centrocytes, we have performed expression analysis of the CD77(+) and CD77(-) populatio