ReviewFrontiers in immunology2023
450 million years in the making: mapping the evolutionary foundations of germinal centers.
Review in Frontiers in immunology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cross-species comparison of amniote single-cell transcriptomes reveals evolutionary conservation and divergence in the chicken immune system.Nature communications · 2026Article
- "Double-duty" dendritic cells in Xenopus laevis: Early vertebrate splenic APCs resemble conventional dendritic cells and limit native antigen presentation to B cells during a humoral response.Molecular immunology · 2026Article
- Resolving the cellular profile of germinal center-analogous microstructures in zebrafish.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Article
- Unique chicken B cell development: species-specific mechanisms and contradictory requirements of B cell receptor for post-hatched B cell development.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Review
- Extrafollicular and Other Non-Germinal Center B Cell Responses: An Evolutionary Perspective.Immunological reviews · 2025Review
- The unexpected role of nurse shark pancreas as a secondary lymphoid organ.Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md. : 1950) · 2025Article
- The axillary lymphoid organ is an external, experimentally accessible immune organ in the zebrafish.The Journal of experimental medicine · 2025Article
- Review
- Understanding vertebrate immunity through comparative immunology.Nature reviews. Immunology · 2025Review
- Conditional requirement for dimerization of the membrane-binding module for BTK signaling in lymphocyte cell lines.Science signaling · 2025Article
- The Janus (dual) model of immunoglobulin isotype evolution: Conservation and plasticity are the defining paradigms.Immunological reviews · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Germinal centers (GCs) are distinct microanatomical structures that form in the secondary lymphoid organs of endothermic vertebrates (i.e., mammals and some birds). Within GCs, B cells undergo a Darwinian selection process to identify clones which can respond to pathogen insult as well as affinity mature the B cell repertoire. The GC response ultimately generates memory B cells and bone marrow plasma cells which facilitate humoral immunological memory, the basis for successful vaccination programs. GCs have not been observed in the secondary lymphoid organs of ectothermic jawed vertebrates (i.e., fishes, reptiles, and amphibians). However, abundant research over the past decades has indicated these organisms can produce antigen specific B cell responses and some degree of affinity maturation. This review examines data demonstrating that the fundamentals of B cell selection may be more conserved across vertebrate phylogeny than previously anticipated. Further, research in both conventional mammalian model systems and comparative models raises the question of what evolutionary benefit GCs provide endotherms if they are seemingly unnecessary for generating the basic functional components of jawed vertebrate humoral adaptive immune responses.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.