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Quorum sensing allows T cells to discriminate between self and nonself

Thomas Charles Butler1, Mehran Kardar, Arup K Chakraborty

  • 1Department of Physics and Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|July 3, 2013
PubMed
Summary

T cells avoid autoimmune disease and respond to infection because the whole T-cell population makes decisions, not individual cells. This population-based T-cell training model explains how the immune system maintains self-tolerance while fighting pathogens.

Keywords:
T-cell–mediated autoimmunityself tolerancestatistical mechanics

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