Paired inhibitory and activating receptor signals

The immunological literature has become inundated with reports regarding paired inhibitory receptors. Paired inhibitory receptor systems are highly conserved families that contain receptors involved in either cellular inhibition or activation. In most cases the paired putative biochemical antagonists are co-expressed on a given cell and thought to bind similar, if not identical, ligands making their biological role difficult to understand. Examples of these systems include immunoglobulin (Ig)-like receptors (Killer Ig Receptors, Immunoglobulin-like Transcripts/Leukocyte Ig-like Receptors/Monocyte Macrophage Ig Receptors, and Paired Ig-like Receptors), and type II lectin-like receptor systems (NKG2 and Ly49). General characteristics of these inhibitory receptors include a cytoplasmic immunoreceptor tyrosine-based inhibitory motif (ITIM). The ITIM is phosphorylated upon engagement and recruits protein tyrosine phosphatases that dephosphorylate cellular substrates that would otherwise mediate activation. In contrast, the activating receptors of these pairs use charged residues within their transmembrane domains to associate with various signal transduction chains including the gamma chain of the receptor for the Fc portion of IgE, DAP12 or DAP10. Once phosphorylated, these chains direct the signal transduction cascade resulting in cellular activation. Here we review the signaling of several paired systems and present the current models for their signal transduction cascades.