Food for Health

 

Date of this Version

11-15-2014

Document Type

Article

Citation

J Mol Biol. 2013 November 15; 425(22): . doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2013.08.007.

Comments

CC-BY-NC-ND

Abstract

One hypothesis to account for MHC-restriction by T cell receptors (TCRs) holds that there are several evolutionary-conserved residues in TCR variable regions that contact MHC. While this ‘germline-codon’ hypothesis is supported by various lines of evidence, it has been difficult to test. The difficulty stems in part from the fact that TCRs exhibit low affinities for pep/MHC, thus limiting the range of binding energies that can be assigned to these key interactions using mutational analyses. To measure the magnitude of binding energies involved, here we used high affinity TCRs engineered by mutagenesis of CDR3. The TCRs included a high-affinity, MART-1/ HLA-A2-specific single-chain TCR and two other high-affinity TCRs that all contain the same Vα (HLA-A2), with different peptides and Vβ regions. Mutational analysis of residues in CDR1 and CDR2 of the three Vα2 regions showed the importance of the key ‘germline codon” residue Y51. However, two other proposed key residues showed significant differences among the TCRs in their relative contributions to binding. Using single-position, yeast-display libraries in two of the key residues, MART-1/HLA-A2 selections also revealed strong preferences for wild-type ‘germline codon’ residues, but several alternative residues could also accommodate binding and hence, MHC-restriction. Thus, although a single residue (Y51) could account for a proportion of the energy associated with positive selection (i.e. MHC-restriction), there is significant plasticity in requirements for particular side-chains in CDR1 and CDR2 and in their relative binding contributions among different TCRs.

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