Efficient mechanisms of central tolerance, including receptor editing and deletion, prevent highly self-reactive B cell receptors (BCRs) from populating the periphery.Despite this, modest self-reactivity persists in (and may even be actively selected into) the mature B cell repertoire. In this review, we discuss new insights into mechanisms of peripheral B cell tolerance that restrain mature B cells from mounting inappropriate responses to endogenous antigens, and place recent work into historical context. In particular, we discuss new findings that have arisen from application of a novel in vivo reporter of BCR signaling, Nur77-eGFP, expression of which scales with the degree of self-reactivity in both monoclonal and polyclonal B cell repertoires. We discuss new and historical evidence that self-reactivity is not just tolerated, but actively selected into the peripheral repertoire. We review recent progress in understanding how dual expression of the IgM and IgD BCR isotypes on mature naive follicular B cells tunes responsiveness to endogenous antigen recognition, and discuss how this may be integrated with other features of clonal anergy. Finally, we discuss how expression of Nur77 itself couples chronic antigen stimulation with B cell tolerance.
K E Y W O R D Sanergy, B cell, IgD, IgM, Nur77/Nr4a1, tolerance Previous work from our laboratory exploiting an in vivo reporter of antigen recognition, Nur77-eGFP BAC Tg, addresses this important point ( Figure 1A). 15 GFP expression in this reporter line is under the control of the regulatory region of Nr4a1/ Nur77. Nr4a1-3 encode a small family of orphan nuclear hormone receptors which were originally cloned as signal-dependent primary response genes (also known as immediate-early genes), and are highly upregulated by a range of mitogens, including antigen receptor stimulation. [16][17][18] Consequently, antigen stimulation rapidly triggers reporter expression in B and T cells in vitro ( Figure 1B), and GFP is also induced by infection or immunization in antigen-specific lymphocytes in