Minding the gap: The impact of B‐cell tolerance on the microbial antibody repertoire

B lymphocytes must respond to vast numbers of foreign antigens, including those of microbial pathogens. To do so, developing B cells use combinatorial joining of V‐, D‐, and J‐gene segments to generate an extraordinarily diverse repertoire of B‐cell antigen receptors (BCRs). Unsurprisingly, a large fraction of this initial BCR repertoire reacts to self‐antigens, and these “forbidden” B cells are culled by immunological tolerance from mature...