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Publication Abstract from PubMed

In order to survey a universe of major histocompatibility complex (MHC)-presented peptide antigens whose numbers greatly exceed the diversity of the T cell repertoire, T cell receptors (TCRs) are thought to be cross-reactive. However, the nature and extent of TCR cross-reactivity has not been conclusively measured experimentally. We developed a system to identify MHC-presented peptide ligands by combining TCR selection of highly diverse yeast-displayed peptide-MHC libraries with deep sequencing. Although we identified hundreds of peptides reactive with each of five different mouse and human TCRs, the selected peptides possessed TCR recognition motifs that bore a close resemblance to their known antigens. This structural conservation of the TCR interaction surface allowed us to exploit deep-sequencing information to computationally identify activating microbial and self-ligands for human autoimmune TCRs. The mechanistic basis of TCR cross-reactivity described here enables effective surveillance of diverse self and foreign antigens without necessitating degenerate recognition of nonhomologous peptides.

Deconstructing the Peptide-MHC Specificity of T Cell Recognition.,Birnbaum ME, Mendoza JL, Sethi DK, Dong S, Glanville J, Dobbins J, Ozkan E, Davis MM, Wucherpfennig KW, Garcia KC Cell. 2014 May 22;157(5):1073-87. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2014.03.047. PMID:24855945^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.