Ex Uno Plura.

The article discusses two research papers concerned with how subsets of T cells that mediate acute and long-term protection to infection are derived from a single precursor. Effector cells are short-lived and numerous T cells that can deploy a variety of cytokine and cell contact-dependent cytotoxic mechanisms to control acute infection. Memory T cells effectively respond to reinfection by the same pathogen. These are both subsets of CD8+ cells. One paper shows that the T cell receptor, which is a heterodimeric protein that serves as the antigen-specific sensor for T cells, helps to generate the signals that allow a primed T cell to differentiate into a memory cell.