Leonore A. Herzenberg

Biography

Leonore A. Herzenberg is Professor of Department of Genetics. Her laboratory operates as a community of scholars working in diverse but interrelated areas. We tend to be highly collaborative and often have students and fellows from other laboratories working at our benches. We are always open to new collaborations and new students and fellows interested in genetics, molecular biology, immunology, cell biology and/or in technology development related to these areas.

Research Interest

Our laboratory focuses on understanding the basic mechanisms that determine and regulate gene expression and cell function in the immune system. Most recently, we have distinguished two functionally and physically distinct murine B cell lineages, only one of which (B-2) originates with the traditional bone marrow HSC and displays the well known characteristics of B cells that develop from the continuously renewed HSC in adult bone marrow. The other lineage, B-1a, develops from phenotypically distinct progenitors that are only detectable during fetal and early neonatal life.and give rise to mature B-1a cells that develop de novo during the first 6-8 weeks of life and persist thereafter by division of the mature B cells. Consistent with these life-style differences, our extensive IgH sequencing studies demonstrate that the antibody repertoires expressed by the two B cell lineages are shaped by forces that operate at different times during development, i.e., the B-1a repertoire is shaped by rearrangements that occur during fetal and neonatal life and are propagated by cell division thereafter, whereas the B-2 repertoire begins to develop around weaning (>6 weeks of age) and continues de novo development from HSC throughout life.