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Faculty Detail Faculty Entry   
Name PETER D BURROWS  
Campus Address SHEL 406 Zip 2182
Phone 205-934-6529
E-mail peterb@uab.edu" id="FacultyDetail1EmailAddress"><a href="mailto:peterb@uab.edu">peterb@uab.edu</a>
URL http://www.microbio.uab.edu/faculty/burrows/Webpage.htm
 
 

Department Affiliations(s)
Appointment Type Department Division Rank
Center  Arthritis & Musculoskeletal Diseases Center  Arthritis & Musculoskeletal Diseases Center Professor
Center  Center for AIDS Research  Center for AIDS Research Professor
Center  Comprehensive Cancer Center  Comprehensive Cancer Center Professor
Center  General Clinical Research Center  Ctr for Clinical & Translational Sci Professor
Primary  Microbiology  Microbiology Professor
Secondary  Genetics   Genetics Chair Office Professor

Biographical Sketch 
Peter D. Burrows received his bachelor's degree in zoology from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He completed his Ph.D. studies in microbiology/immunology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and then spent four years as an Assistant Scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Tübingen Germany.

Dr. Burrows returned to UAB in the fall of 1983 and is currently Professor of Microbiology and Genetics. He is Director of the Microbiology Department Graduate program and the GBS Immunology Theme graduate program. Dr. Burrows is a member of the Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Comprehensive Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Autoimmunity Center and the Center for AIDS Research.

Society Memberships
Organization Name Position Held Org Link
American Association for the Advancement of Science     
American Association of Immunologists     
American Society for Microbiology     
 

Research/Clinical Interest
Title
B Lymphocyte Development and Function
Description
B Lymphocyte Development and Function

The long term goal of our studies is to understand the normal progression of the multipotential hemopoietic stem cell as it commits to development along the B cell lineage, undergoing the changes in phenotype and genotype that are characteristic of B cells.

Intracellular Fc receptor-related proteins
We have identified FCRLA as a new member of the larger Fc receptor (FcR) and FcR-like (FCRL) gene family of humans and mice. Among hemopoietic cells, FCRLA expression is restricted to B cells. In humans, FCRLA is preferentially expressed by germinal center B cells but its expression in the mouse has not yet been defined. The conventional FcR and the FcRL molecules are nearly all transmembrane proteins, and all of them have extracellular glycoprotein domains for ligand binding.

In striking contrast, FCRLA is an intracellular protein. It lacks N-linked glycosylation sites and a transmembrane region, but contains a signal sequence common to proteins targeted to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Our data now clearly indicate a role for FCRLA as a resident ER protein that associates with immunoglobulin in this organelle. Moreover, analysis of FCRLA expression in the Ramos IgM B cell line, which produces both the membrane (m) and secretory (s) isoforms of &#956; heavy chain, indicates that FCRLA preferentially associates with &#956;s. The unique features and restricted cellular distribution of FCRLA suggest its importance in the metabolism of Ig in B cells and in normal immune system function. Definition of the composition and function of the Ig-FCRLA complex is a major goal of our studies. These functions could include aiding Ig folding, facilitating Ig assembly, regulating Ig transport, and/or monitoring the degradation of incompletely processed Ig molecules. FCRLA may play an essential role in the intracellular quality control system that ensures the correct production of antibodies. Moreover, its preferential expression in human germinal center B cells, where B cell proliferation, antibody class switching, and mutation of antibody variable region genes occurs, suggests that defects in FCRLA expression may lead to autoimmunity or immunodeficiency diseases.

The mb-1 gene
During a subtractive cDNA screen for developmentally regulated genes in B cells, we isolated the human version of mb-1. This gene encodes Ig&#945; (CD79a), a transmembrane glycoprotein that forms a covalent heterodimer with Igß (CD79b) and associates noncovalently with surface immunoglobulin (sIg) on B cells to form the B cell antigen receptor. The Ig&#945;/ß chains are essential chaperones for cell surface expression of the BCR and are the signal transducing components of the receptor.

The acronym mb-1 derived from "mouse B-cell-specific gene number 1", the name coined by Sakaguchi and colleagues who first cloned the gene in mice. The human mb-1 gene is also expressed predominantly in B cells, but we observed low level mRNA expression in certain T cell lines. We have recently extended this analysis to normal cells and find that mb-1 mRNA is also expressed in normal human T cells. Intriguingly, the mb-1 gene product, Ig&#945;, is found in some T cell lines but not in normal T lymphocytes. This finding implies that translation of mb-1 is regulated differently in T and B cells, and that the translational regulation is defective in transformed T cells. The human mb-1 mRNA contains a region of ~ 100 nucleotides in the 3' untranslated region that is highly conserved (>90%) in mouse and bovine mb-1. We hypothesize that this conserved region is important in the translational regulation of mb-1 expression.

Postdoc Positions Available
Date Posted Position Title
No records
 

Selected Publications 
Publication PUBMEDID
Burrows PD. 2012. The IFReC-SIgN winter school on advanced immunology. Nat Immunol. 13:625-7.  22713818 
Vale AM, Foote JB, Granato A, Zhuang Y, Pereira RM, Lopes UG, Bellio M, Burrows PD, Schroeder HW Jr, Nobrega A.: A rapid and quantitative method for the evaluation of V gene usage, specificities and the clonal size of B cell repertoires. J Immunol Methods. 376:143-9, 2012.  22226792 
Santiago, T, Kulemzin, SV, Reshetnikova, ES, Chikaev, NA, Volkova, OY, Mechetina, LV, Zhao, M, Davis, RS, Taranin, AV, Najakshin, AM, Hendershot, LM, Burrows, PD: FCRLA is a resident endoplasmic reticulum protein that associates with intracellular Igs, IgM, IgG and IgA. Int. Immunol. 23:43-53, 2011.   21149418 
Masuda, K, Mori, H, Ohara, O, Nakayama, M, Wang, JY, Burrows, PD: Defining the immunological phenotype of Fc receptor-like B (FCRLB) deficient mice: Confounding role of the inhibitory Fc&#947;RIIb. Cell. Immunol. 266:24-31, 2010.   20869045 
Conley ME and Burrows PD.: Plugging the leaky pre-B cell receptor. (Commentary on Pillars article: “A critical role of lambda 5 protein in B cell development.” Kitamura, D, et al., Cell. 1992. 69: 823-831) J Immunol. 184:1127-9. 2010.   20089707 
Burrows PD, Kronenberg M, Taniguchi M.: NKT cells turn ten. Nat Immunol. 10:669-71. 2009.   19536187 
Burrows, PD and Fischer, A.: Building networks for immunodeficiency diseases and immunology training. Nat Immunol. 9:1005-1007 2008.   18711439 
Munfus, D.L., Haga, C.L., Burrows, P.D., and Cooper MD.: A conserved gene family encodes transmembrane proteins with fibronectin, immunoglobulin and leucine-rich repeat domains (FIGLER). BMC Biol. 5:36 2007.   17854505 
Maltai, L., Lovering, R., Taranin, A. V., Colonna, M., Ravetch, J. V., Dalla-Favera, R., Burrows, P. D., Cooper, M. D., and Davis, R. S.: New proposed nomenclature for the Fc receptor-like (FCRL) family. Nature Immunology 7:431-432 2006.  16622424 
Zhang, Z., Espinoza, C.R., Yu, Z., Stephan, R., Te, T., Williams, G.S., Burrows, P.D., Hagman, J., Feeney, A.J., and Cooper, M.D.: Transcription factor Pax5 (BSAP) transactivates the RAG-mediated VH-to-DJH rearrangement of immunoglobulin genes. Nature Immunology 7:616-624 2006.  16680144 
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Keywords
B lymphocyte, development, molecular biology

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