Chapter 10 - The Bursa of Fabricius in Lymphocyte Maturation

Abstract

Bruce Glick discovered that the bursa of Fabricius, a hindgut, lymphoepithelial structure in chickens, is responsible for the development of antibody-producing B lymphocytes. Glick published his results in 1956; however, they remained obscure for another 5years. Glick and a fellow graduate student, Timothy Chang, serendipitously discovered the function of the bursa while preparing an undergraduate immunology laboratory. When they needed animals to demonstrate antibody production, the only animals available were adult chickens that had been bursectomized as hatchlings. Injection of these chickens with antigen resulted in no antibody production. The students sent a manuscript to the journal Science, which returned it with a request for additional information on the mechanism. The paper was finally published in the journal Poultry Science. Rediscovery of the role of the bursa in the late 1950s and early 1960s by several groups, along with the studies of Jacques Miller on the role of the thymus, led quickly to an understanding of the division of lymphocytes into separate, functional populations. Ivan Roitt and colleagues in London reviewed these data and introduced the terms B and T lymphocytes in 1969. This functional division of the lymphocytes of the immune system shed light on the origins of several congenital immunodeficiency diseases and stimulated the development of cellular immunology as a discipline.