Plasma cell maintenance and correlates of survival

Plasma cell survival is important for generating durable memory responses. Currently, how PC survival is determined is not fully known. One theory is that PCs live within a tissue compartment that has a limited amount of space. PCs can either live here until they ‘know’ when to die or they are ’pushed’ out by new PCs. This thesis used two novel mouse models that could identify long-lived PCs and newly made PCs and found that all PCs were born with different survival identities that were associated with an internal ‘clock’ that pre-determined its lifespan.