A Network Model to Describe the Terminal Differentiation of B Cells
Fig 4
Differentiation from Naive to the PC cell type.
The changes in the activation of all nodes of the network are shown as a heatmap which scales from blue to red as the activation level goes from 0 to 1, respectively. Extracellular signals are simulated as a burst for two or more units of time (arrows). Starting from the Naive (Bach2+, Pax5+) stationary state (t = 0 to t ≈ 25), the system moves to the GC attractor (Bach2+, Bcl6+, Pax5+) due to the presence of a simulated pulse of IL-4 (t ≈ 25) which in turn transit to the Mem attractor (Bach2+, Irf4+, Pax5+) due to the action of CD40L (t ≈ 55) and finally, Mem attractor moves to the PC state (Blimp1+, Irf4+) by the presence of Ag signal (t ≈ 75).