Discovery and Characterization
The IL-2 receptor (IL-2R) was the first interleukin receptor to be described and characterized by Kendall Smith and his team at Dartmouth Medical School. It was found to have a high affinity binding site and is expressed by antigen-activated T lymphocytes (T cells). Radiolabeled IL-2 concentrations found to saturate these sites (e.g. 1-100 pM) were identical to those determined to promote T cell proliferation. Subsequently, the three distinct receptor chains, termed alpha (α), beta (β) and gamma (γ) were identified. The high affinity of IL-2 binding is created by a rapid association rate (k = 107/M/s) contributed by the alpha chain, and a relatively slow dissociation rate (k' = 10−4/s) contributed by the beta and gamma chains.
Read more about this topic: IL-2 Receptor
Famous quotes containing the words discovery and and/or discovery:
“The new supplants the old. Yet men’s minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Your discovery of the contradiction caused me the greatest surprise and, I would almost say, consternation, since it has shaken the basis on which I intended to build my arithmetic.... It is all the more serious since, with the loss of my rule V, not only the foundations of my arithmetic, but also the sole possible foundations of arithmetic seem to vanish.”
—Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)