- Yang, Fan;
- Nielsen, Sandra CA;
- Hoh, Ramona A;
- Röltgen, Katharina;
- Wirz, Oliver Fabian;
- Haraguchi, Emily;
- Jean, Grace H;
- Lee, Ji-Yeun;
- Pham, Tho D;
- Jackson, Katherine JL;
- Roskin, Krishna M;
- Liu, Yi;
- Nguyen, Khoa;
- Ohgami, Robert S;
- Osborne, Eleanor M;
- Nadeau, Kari C;
- Niemann, Claus U;
- Parsonnet, Julie;
- Boyd, Scott D
Vaccination and infection promote the formation, tissue distribution, and clonal evolution of B cells, which encode humoral immune memory. We evaluated pediatric and adult blood and deceased adult organ donor tissues to determine convergent antigen-specific antibody genes of similar sequences shared between individuals. B cell memory varied for different pathogens. Polysaccharide antigen-specific clones were not exclusive to the spleen. Adults had higher clone frequencies and greater class switching in lymphoid tissues than blood, while pediatric blood had abundant class-switched convergent clones. Consistent with reported serology, prepandemic children had class-switched convergent clones to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 with weak cross-reactivity to other coronaviruses, while adult blood or tissues showed few such clones. These results highlight the prominence of early childhood B cell clonal expansions and cross-reactivity for future responses to novel pathogens.