Mechanisms for T Cell Receptor Triggering

Overview

Journal Nat Rev Immunol

Specialty Allergy & Immunology

Date 2010 Dec 4

PMID 21127503

Citations 236

Authors

P Anton van der Merwe

Omer Dushek

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

There is considerable controversy about the mechanism of T cell receptor (TCR) triggering, the process by which the TCR tranduces signals across the plasma membrane after binding to its ligand (an agonist peptide complexed with an MHC molecule). Three main types of mechanism have been proposed, which involve aggregation, conformational change and segregation. Here, we review recently published evidence for each type of mechanism and conclude that all three may be involved. This complexity may reflect the uniquely demanding nature of TCR-mediated antigen recognition, which requires the detection of a very weak 'signal' (very rare foreign peptide-MHC ligands) in the presence of considerable 'noise' (abundant self peptide-MHC molecules).

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