UCSF

One of the most important cellular decisions made by the immune system is whether or not a T cell will activate after contacting and antigen presenting cell (APC). This choice occurs and is regulated at the site of contact between a T cell and an APC. A hallmark of this “immunological synapse” is the partitioning of membrane proteins to create biochemically distinct domains that initiate signaling. Though the importance of protein segregation at the immunological synapse has been appreciated for decades, the mechanism by which proteins partition into different domains and how partitioning is modulated for regulation were not well understood. In this study, I aimed to understand how receptor and co-receptor organization on the T cell membrane controls signaling.