Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

B cell development is a tightly regulated process dependent on sequential rearrangements of immunoglobulin loci that encode the antigen receptor. To elucidate the role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in the orchestration of B cell development, we ablated all miRNAs at the earliest stage of B cell development by conditionally targeting the enzymes critical for RNAi in early B cell precursors. Absence of any one of these enzymes led to a block at the pro- to pre-B cell transition due to increased apoptosis and a failure of pre-B cells to proliferate. Expression of a Bcl2 transgene allowed for partial rescue of B cell development, however, the majority of the rescued B cells had low surface immunoglobulin expression with evidence of ongoing light chain editing. Our analysis revealed that miRNAs are critical for the regulation of the PTEN-AKT-FOXO1 pathway that in turn controls Rag expression during B cell development.