Variability and Robustness in T Cell Activation from Regulated Heterogeneity in Protein Levels

By Ofer Feinerman, Joël Veiga, J. Dorfman, Ronald N. Germain, G. Altan-Bonnet. Science, 2008

363 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In T cells, the stochasticity of protein expression could contribute to the useful diversification of biological functions within a clonal population or interfere with accurate antigen discrimination. Combining computer modeling and single-cell measurements, we examined how endogenous variation in the expression levels of signaling proteins might affect antigen responsiveness during T cell activation. We found that the CD8 co-receptor fine-tunes activation thresholds, whereas the soluble hematopoietic phosphatase 1 (SHP-1) digitally regulates cell responsiveness. Stochastic variation in the expression of these proteins generates substantial diversity of activation within a clonal population of T cells, but co-regulation of CD8 and SHP-1 levels ultimately limits this very diversity. These findings reveal how eukaryotic cells can draw on regulated variation in gene expression to achieve phenotypic variability in a controlled manner.

Subfields: Immunology, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5f5c25888fc98243344e0d268ff15f46674a5daf

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In Immunology

  1. G. Altan-Bonnet
  2. James L. Riley

In Molecular Biology

  1. Peter K. Sorger
  2. Gustavo A. Stolovitzky
  3. Robert J. Prill
  4. G. Altan-Bonnet
  5. J. Sáez-Rodríguez
  6. Neil D. Clarke
  7. Daniel Marbach
  8. Peter Buhlmann

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