9. Lymphocyte signalling 1 Flashcards
Why is learning about T cell signalling important?
- Most signalling pathways are not restricted to T cells.
- It is a big part of drug development as they are developed against individual molecules to change a function, and it is important to understand how the interactions of the molecules affect each other.
What is the basic function of a receptor?
- A receptor takes extracellular information and uses it to cause a biochemical change that can alter cell behaviour.
- The binding to a receptor will trigger some sort of conformational change.
- This change triggers a biochemical change through enzymes. eg phosphorylation of tyrosine.
- this can be done with 1 molecule like EGFR or 10 like TCR.
What do the protein chains in the TCR contain?
- Signalling motifs that allow the signal from the a/ß chains to be transmitted across the plasma membrane.
- As antigen recognition and signal transduction are on separate proteins, there needs to be something that holds them together.
- The a/ß chains contain positively charged residues in the transmembrane domain.
- The other chains contain negatively charged residues in the transmembrane domain.
- This does have a charge imbalance but this holds the complex together.
- Having charged residues in the membrane is a huge energy burden.
What protein chains make up a TCR?
- a/ß chains that are different in every TCR and bind the MHC complex for antigen recognition.
- CD3yε dimer. This is the same in every TCR.
- CD3δε dimer. This is the same in every TCR.
- Zeta dimer. This is the same in every TCR.
What other complex does the TCR work with?
- the MHC peptide complex
- The peptide and the MHC is recognised by the TCR.
- The invariant chains in the MHC bind the co-receptors associated with the TCR.
- CD4 co-receptor binds MHC2
- CD8 co-receptor binds MHC1
- Basic T cell activation needs antigen recognition and co-receptor binding.
What are the critical signalling motifs in the TCR/BCR?
- ITAMs: immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif.
- These have 2 tyrosine residues that can be phosphorylated by kinases.
- It has a tyrosine and then 3 positions later the must be a large aliphatic amino acid. This is a leucine or isoleucine.
- This is repeated after about 10 amino acids.
How many ITAMs are in a TCR?
1.δ, y and e chains have 1 ITAM each
2. z chains have 3 ITAMs each
3. Totals 10 ITAMs and 20 tyrosine residues
Where is the enzymatic activity in the TCR?
- None of the protein chains in the TCR have enzymatic domains.
- It needs to recruit enzymes to the complex
What enzymes do the TCR recruit for initial signalling?
Tyrosine kinases Lck and ZAP-70 provide the enzyme activity needed for the TCR to generate a signal.
What is Lck?
- A Src family kinase
- It is always associated with co-receptors CD4 and CD8.
- If an MHC-peptide binds the TCR, Lck. is bought into the complex.
- Lck then phosphorylates the ITAMs in the TCR.
What are Src family kinases?
- Originally found in viruses
- They are a large family of kinases
- Include Src, Lck, Csk, Fyn and Lyn
Src family kinase domains: Lipid tail
- Lipid modification of the protein
- Helps it localised to the plasma membrane and stay there for longer.
- Very common in proteins working close to the membrane.
Src family kinase domains: Unique domain
Along with the lipid tail the unique src domain control the interaction with CD4 and CD8.
Src family kinase domains: SH2 domain
- A protein recruitment domain.
- It binds to phosphorylated tyrosines
Src family kinase domains: SH3 domains
- A protein recognition domain
- IT binds to a proline X X proline motif
Src family kinase domains: kinase domain
- The enzymatic domain with some protein protein interaction domains.
- A tyrosine residue in the kinase domain is an activating tyrosine that can activate itself through autophosphorylation.
- A c-terminal tyrosine residue that is inhibitory when it is phosphorylated.
What are the 2 main functions of signalling?
- Causing a change in localisation
- Enzymatic activity
What happens if a signal is always on?
Oncogenic transformation
What needs to happen when a signal turns on?
A method of turning it off is upregulated
How are Src family kinases inhibited/turned off?
- Through proline X X proline motif in the linker-SH3 region that the SH3 can bind.
- C-terminal tyrosine being phosphorylated.
- Through a physical blockade that is often intramolecular.
- This is a different domain in the same protein that binds the functional domain to prevent it eg the SH2 binding the C-terminal tyrosine
What is different about the regulation of Lck in T cells?
- Evidence suggests Lck has similar activity levels in inactive and active T cells.
- The key element of the regulation of Lck and other Src kinases is the localisation and the bringing of Lck to the TCR and plasma membrane.
- CD4/8 is heavily involved in this.
How do different phosphorylation patterns change the activity of Lck?
- If the Inhibitory tyrosine is phosphorylated by another src family kinases called Csk the activity is inhibited.
- If the stimulatory tyrosine is phosphorylated by Lck itself, its activity is activated.
- Both can be dephosphorylated by the transmembrane phosphatase CD45.