Antigen-presenting Cell - Interaction With T Cells

Interaction With T Cells

After APCs have phagocytosed pathogens, they usually migrate to the vast networks of lymph vessels and are carried via lymph flow to the draining lymph nodes (this network is collectively known as the Lymphatic system). The lymph nodes become a collection point to which APCs such as dendritic cells (DCs) can interact with T cells. They do this by chemotaxis, which involves interacting with chemokines that are expressed on the surface of cells (e.g., endothelial cells of the high endothelial venules) or have been released as chemical messengers to draw the APCs to the lymph nodes. During the migration, DCs undergo a process of maturation; in essence, they lose most of their ability to further engulf pathogens, and they develop an increased ability to communicate with T cells. Enzymes within the cell digest the swallowed pathogen into smaller pieces containing epitopes, which are then presented to T cells using MHC.

Recent research indicates that only certain epitopes of a pathogen are presented because they are immunodominant, it seems as a function of their binding affinity to the MHC. The stronger binding affinity allows the complex to remain kinetically stable long enough to be recognized by T cells.

Read more about this topic:  Antigen-presenting Cell

Famous quotes containing the words interaction with t, interaction with, interaction and/or cells:

    Recent studies that have investigated maternal satisfaction have found this to be a better prediction of mother-child interaction than work status alone. More important for the overall quality of interaction with their children than simply whether the mother works or not, these studies suggest, is how satisfied the mother is with her role as worker or homemaker. Satisfied women are consistently more warm, involved, playful, stimulating and effective with their children than unsatisfied women.
    Alison Clarke-Stewart (20th century)

    Just because multiples can turn to each other for companionship, and at times for comfort, don’t be fooled into thinking you’re not still vital to them. Don’t let or make multiples be parents as well as siblings to each other. . . . Parent interaction with infants and young children has everything to do with how those children develop on every level, including how they develop their identities.
    Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)

    Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The twelve Cells for Incorrigibles ... are also carved out of the solid rock hill. On the walls of one of the cells human “liberty” is clearly inscribed, with the “liberty” in significant quotation marks.
    —Administration in the State of Ariz, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)