T cells need to “relax” to protect people from diseases, according to a new study.
Like finding that needle in the haystack every time, your T cells manage what seems like an improbable task: quickly finding a few invaders among the many imposters in your body to trigger its immune response.
The new study suggests that T cells’ speedy and accurate reaction has to do with how they “relax” in the process of binding to ligands—short, functional molecules—that are either attached to the invaders or just resemble them.
Scientists’ simple model of T cell activation of the immune response shows the T cell binding, via a receptor (TCR) to an antigen-presenting cell (APC). If an invader is identified as such, the response is activated, but only if the “relaxation” time of the binding is long enough. (Credit: Hamid Teimouri)
The look-alikes greatly outnumber the antigen ligands attached to attacking pathogens.
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