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Tetrameric peptide-MHC complexes | |
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A powerful tool for the phenotypic analysis of antigen-specific T cells. What was known before? On the one hand, limiting dilution assays may underestimate the number of specific T cells because this technique cannot detect cells with little or no proliferative potential. On the other hand, soluble peptide-MHC complexes dissociate rapidly from their specific T cell receptor and therefore are not apt for analytical studies of T cell phenotypes. The important questions Can multimerization of the MHC-peptide complexes increase their avidity for the T cell receptors and thus generate reagents which are more suitable for an immunological stain? Can such a technique - in contrast to limiting dilution assays - allow phenotypic studies directly ex vivo without further need of restimulation in vitro? The experiment  Related paper Altman JD, Moss PA, Goulder PJ, Barouch DH, McHeyzer-Williams MG, Bell JI, McMichael AJ, Davis MM. 1996. Phenotypic analysis of antigen-specific T lymphocytes. Science. Oct 4;274(5284):94-6. |
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