Bone marrow and spleen single cell suspensions were stained for dead cell exclusion using Live/Dead fixable violet dead cell staining kit (Invitrogen Life Technologies, Grand Island, NY). Surface markers were stained with a mixture of fluorochrome-conjugated antibodies, which included: CD19 (clone 6D5, BioLegend, San Diego, CA), B220 (clone RA3-6B2, eBioscience, San Diego, CA), CD138 (clone 281–2, BD bioscience, San Jose, CA), IgD (clone 11.26c.2a, BioLegend, San Diego, CA), IgM (clone II/41, eBioscience, San Diego, CA), IgG (eBioscience, San Diego, CA), MHC class II (clone 500A2, eBioscience, San Diego, CA), CD80 (clone I6-10A1, BD bioscience, San Jose, CA) CD86 (clone GL-1, BioLegend, San Diego, CA).
Fluorescence minus one (FMO) controls were included in each staining protocol and used to set specific gates (22 (link), 26 , 27 (link)). 6-peak validation beads were used for calibration during the time course analysis. Samples were run on a 12-color LSRII cytometer (BD bioscience, San Jose, CA) and analyzed by Flow Jo software (Tree Star Inc., Ashland, OR).