Digital response in T cells: to be or not to be
A recent study published in Immunity shows that foreign antigens elicit all-or-nothing T cell responses and that a single antigen is enough to trigger this digital cytokine secretion.
Mammalian cells sense extracellular stimuli through cell surface receptors.The contact between receptor and ligand is the starting point of signaling pathways that ultimately result in a cellular response.Measured at a population level,these responses (e.g.,effector molecule production) typically increase with ligand concentrations.There is increasing evidence that population-wide measurements do not necessarily reflect single-cell behavior.When measured at the single-cell level,various signaling pathways show digital responses,i.e.,they respond to stimuli by activating key molecules in an all-or-nothing manner.This was recently shown to be the case for nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) [1]and nuclear factor of activated T cells 1 (NFAT1) [2].In cells stimulated with TNF-α (for NF-κB) or Leukotriene C4 (for NFAT1),these transcription factors showed either high levels of nuclear translocation and subsequent gene expression or none at all.
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2014-04-21（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）
共2页
265-266
