Department of Molecular Immunology, Max Planck-Institute of Immunobiology and Institute of Biology III, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
FEBS Lett. 2010 Dec 15;584(24):4832-7. doi: 10.1016/j.febslet.2010.09.004. Epub 2010 Sep 7.
The T-cell antigen receptor (TCR) is a multisubunit transmembrane complex that mediates the antigen-specific activation of T cells. Using a variety of techniques, several research groups have shown that TCRs are at least partially pre-clustered before antigen binding. These new findings are contradictory to the "classical" view, according to which TCRs are randomly distributed on the cell surface and only associate upon antigen binding. In this review we try to answer the following questions: What are the experimental evidences for the existence of pre-clustered TCRs? How can the TCR pre-clusters be activated upon antigen binding? Which functional consequences for T-cell activation arise from the pre-clustering of TCRs.
T 细胞抗原受体（TCR）是一种多亚基跨膜复合物，介导 T 细胞的抗原特异性激活。使用多种技术，几个研究小组已经表明 TCR 在抗原结合之前至少部分预先聚集。这些新发现与“经典”观点相矛盾，根据经典观点，TCR 随机分布在细胞表面，仅在抗原结合时才相互关联。在这篇综述中，我们试图回答以下问题：存在预先聚集的 TCR 的实验证据是什么？TCR 预先聚集如何在抗原结合时被激活？TCR 预先聚集对 T 细胞激活产生哪些功能后果。
