Focusing in on T Cell Cross-Reactivity

Focusing in on T Cell Cross-Reactivity

To provide broad immunity to a vast array of foreign antigens with a limited number of T lymphocytes, each cell has to recognize many targets. By implementing a strategy to identify T cell receptor (TCR) ligands and investigating at a fine granularity their structure and sequence relationship, Birnbaum et al. demonstrate the surprisingly tight focus of such T cell cross-reactivity.

Controls T Cell Cross - Reactivity

CD8 controls T cell cross-reactivity.

Estimates of human αβ TCR diversity suggest that there are <10(8) different Ag receptors in the naive T cell pool, a number that is dwarfed by the potential number of different antigenic peptide-MHC (pMHC) molecules that could be encountered. Consequently, an extremely high degree of cross-reactivity is essential for effective T cell immunity. Ag recognition by T cells is unique in that it invo...

Controls T Cell Cross - Reactivity Andrew

Quantitating T cell cross-reactivity for unrelated peptide antigens.

Quantitating the frequency of T cell cross-reactivity to unrelated peptides is essential to understanding T cell responses in infectious and autoimmune diseases. Here we used 15 mouse or human CD8+ T cell clones (11 antiviral, 4 anti-self) in conjunction with a large library of defined synthetic peptides to examine nearly 30,000 TCR-peptide MHC class I interactions for cross-reactions. We ident...