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Updated: Aug 10, 2026

Visualization of the Immunological Synapse by Dual Color Time-gated Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) Nanoscopy
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Visualization of the Immunological Synapse by Dual Color Time-gated Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) Nanoscopy

Published on: March 24, 2014

Correlation of a dynamic model for immunological synapse formation with effector functions: two pathways to synapse

Sung-Joo E Lee1, Yuko Hori, Jay T Groves

  • 1Biophysics Graduate Group, Dept of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Trends in Immunology
|September 26, 2002
PubMed

During antigen recognition by T cells different receptors and ligands form a pattern in the intercellular junction called the immunological synapse, which might be involved in T-cell activation. Recently, a synapse assembly model has been proposed, which enables the calculation of the propensity for synapse assembly driven by membrane-constrained protein binding interactions. We bring together model predictions of mature synapse assembly with data on the dependence of T-cell responses on T-cell receptor (TCR)-MHC-peptide (pMHC) binding kinetics. Predictions of mature synapse assembly, based on TCR-pMHC binding kinetics, correlate well with observed cytokine responses by T cells bearing the relevant TCR but not with cytotoxic T lymphocyte-mediated killing. We discuss the suggested different role for the synapse in pre- and post-nuclear activation events in T cells. The view of immunological synapse assembly given here emphasizes the importance of both the on and off rates for the TCR-pMHC interaction and in this context recent data on a positive role for analogs of self-peptides in synapse assembly is considered.

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