Neisseria lactamica selectively induces mitogenic proliferation of the naive B cell pool via cell surface Ig

Neisseria lactamica is a commensal bacteria that colonizes the human upper respiratory tract mucosa during early childhood. In contrast to the closely related opportunistic pathogen Neisseria meningitidis, there is an absence of adaptive cell-mediated immunity to N. lactamica during the peak age of carriage. Instead, outer membrane vesicles derived from N. lactamica mediate a B cell-dependent proliferative response in mucosal mononuclear cells that is associated with the production of polyclonal IgM. We demonstrate in this study that this is a mitogenic human B cell response that occurs independently of T cell help and any other accessory cell population. The ability to drive B cell proliferation is a highly conserved property and is present in N. lactamica strains derived from diverse clonal complexes. CFSE staining of purified human tonsillar B cells demonstrated that naive IgD⁺ and CD27^- B cells are selectively induced to proliferate by outer membrane vesicles, including the innate CD5⁺ subset. Neither purified lipooligosaccharide nor PorB from N. lactamica is likely to be responsible for this activity. Prior treatment of B cells with pronase to remove cell-surface Ig or treatment with BCR-specific Abs abrogated the proliferative response to N. lactamica outer membrane vesicles, suggesting that this mitogenic response is dependent upon the BCR.