1. Rare, Structurally Homologous Self-Peptides Promote Thymocyte Positive Selection
- Author
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Santori, Fabio R., Kieper, William C., Brown, Stuart M., Lu, Yun, Neubert, Thomas A., Johnson, Kenneth L., Naylor, Stephen, Vukmanović, Stanislav, Hogquist, Kristin A., and Jameson, Stephen C.
- Subjects
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PEPTIDES , *T cells , *LIGANDS (Biochemistry) - Abstract
Although it is clear that positive selection of T cells involves recognition of specific self-peptide/MHC complexes, the nature of these self-ligands and their relationship to the cognate antigen are controversial. Here we used two complementary strategies to identify naturally occurring self-peptides able to induce positive selection of T cells bearing a specific T cell receptor, OT-I. Both the bioassay- and bioinformatics-based strategies identified the same self-peptides, derived from F-actin capping protein and β-catenin. These peptides displayed charge conservation at two key TCR contact residues. The biological activity of 43 other self-peptides and of complex peptide libraries directly correlated to the extent of conservation at TCR contact residues. These results demonstrate that selecting self-peptides are rare and can be identified by homology-based search strategies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]
- Published
- 2002
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