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. 2013 Jan 14;210(1):1–3. doi: 10.1084/jem.20122739

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© 2013 Greaves

This article is distributed under the terms of an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike–No Mirror Sites license for the first six months after the publication date (see http://www.rupress.org/terms). After six months it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).

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Figure 1. — Putative pattern of clonal evolution and antigen dependence in CLL. Three potential mechanisms may underlie microbial drive in the transformation of B cells in CLL. Germinal center B cells with high-affinity BCRs (blue) may be chronically stimulated by microbial antigens, increasing the probability that the cell acquires transforming mutations. After transformation, subclones of antigen-specific B cells may acquire mutations that confer a selective proliferative advantage in the presence of antigen (orange). Finally, antigen-specific B cells may acquire mutations that render BCR signaling completely independent of antigenic ligation (green). The “Y”-shaped symbols indicate BCRs, and “A” indicates nominal antigens derived from microbial infection.