CD19⁺and negative BM ASC gene expression and sequence identity indicates a common differentiation path. (A) Known ASC genes (XBP-1, PRDM-1, SDC-1), B-cell genes (IL-4R, CD19, MS4A1), and phenotype genes (TNFRSF7, CD38) were assayed from freshly isolated BM. CD38^highCD27⁺ gated cells showed increased expression of ASC genes and low levels of expression of B-cell genes by PrimeFlow. (B) Principal component (PC) analysis was performed on all genes based on relative expression from Affymetrix microarray (U133) for all 4 sorted cell populations from human BM. (C) Graphical representation showing the number of differentially regulated probes (upregulated/downregulated) for each cell population combination. (D) A volcano plot showing log₂ (fold change) vs −log₁₀ (adjusted P value) for each paired BM population comparison. Red dots indicate genes with significant expression change; gray dots indicate genes with no significant expression change. (E) Six genes with increased expression on CD19⁺ ASC and 8 uncharacterized genes with increased expression specific to CD19⁻ ASCs. (F) Heat map of a pairwise comparison of common CDR-H3 sequences between donors. CD19⁺ and CD19⁻ ASCs were profiled for 6 donors, and the sequences with identical CDR-H3 were considered as identical clones. The number in the heat map describes the number of common clones between 2 samples, and the number in the diagonal line showed the total number of CDR-H3 sequences in the sample. Max., maximum.