B lymphocyte activation and lattice formation.

When B lymphocyte activation is viewed within the general context of the clonal selection theory it is seen that this complex process must, under normal physiological conditions, be initiated only after antigen recognition by the B cell, that is, after antigen binding to the cells immunoglobulin receptors. The cross linking of receptors by effectively multivalent antigens, so as to form a receptor-antigen lattice may be generally required for activation. A theory is developed for the rate of lattice formation in the presence of inhibition by free hapten. It is shown that free hapten can very effectively inhibit the rate of lattice formation, particularly on high affinity cells, even though it cannot compete with multivalent binding at equilibrium.