Аннотация:Significance T cells initiate and regulate adaptive immune responses when their T-cell antigen receptors recognize antigens. The T-cell response is known to depend on the antigen affinity/dose, but the precise relationship, and the mechanisms underlying it, are debated. To resolve the debate, we stimulated T cells with antigens spanning a 1 million-fold range in affinity/dose. We found that a different antigen (and hence different affinity) produced the largest T-cell response at different doses. Using model identification algorithms, we report a simple mechanistic model that can predict the T-cell response from the physiological low-affinity regime into the high-affinity regime applicable to therapeutic receptors.
