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Publications in Scientific Journals:

B. Rossboth, A. Arnold, H. Ta, R. Platzer, F. Kellner, J. Huppa, M. Brameshuber, F. Baumgart, G. Schütz:
"TCRs are randomly distributed on the plasma membrane of resting antigen-experienced T cells";
Nature Immunology, 19 (2018), 821 - 827.



English abstract:
The main function of T cells is to identify harmful antigens as quickly and precisely as possible. Super-resolution microscopy
data have indicated that global clustering of T cell antigen receptors (TCRs) occurs before T cell activation. Such pre-activation
clustering has been interpreted as representing a potential regulatory mechanism that fine tunes the T cell response. We found
here that apparent TCR nanoclustering could be attributed to overcounting artifacts inherent to single-molecule-localization
microscopy. Using complementary super-resolution approaches and statistical image analysis, we found no indication of global
nanoclustering of TCRs on antigen-experienced CD4+ T cells under non-activating conditions. We also used extensive simulations
of super-resolution images to provide quantitative limits for the degree of randomness of the TCR distribution. Together
our results suggest that the distribution of TCRs on the plasma membrane is optimized for fast recognition of antigen in the
first phase of T cell activation.

Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.