Transcriptomic analyis of in-vitro plasma cell generation from follicular and marginal zone B cells with cell cycle inhibition via PD0332991 and rapamycin

Plasma cell differentiation is thought to be tied to cell division. We observe that marginal zone B cells are able to differentiate to plasma cells without completing a single cell division. In order to characterize the transcriptome of plasma cells derrived from un-divided MZ B cells we performed in vitro plasma cell differentiation cultures in the presence of the CDK4/6 inhibitor PD0332991 or rapamycin using Blimp1-GFP reporter follicular and MZ B cells. We report here that these resulting plasma cells from undivided MZ B cells exhibit normal plasma cell gene expression and function in the absence of mitosis. Samples are follicular B cells and marginal zone B cells stimulated in culture to produce plasma cells. cDNA was prepared from RNA with 3' polyA capture method. Transcript abundance was measured by Kallisto psuedo-alignment and normalized (voom) and differential expression was assessed using limma.