2018/10/14 by Miloš Knežević, Shenshen Wang, Hongda Jiang
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Neuroscience · Physics and Astronomy · #Biology #Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Lipid Membrane Structure and Behavior #Materials science #Neuroscience #Neuroscience and Neural Engineering #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.bio-ph #q-bio.CB
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.121.238101
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 238101 (2018) · 6 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2018/10/14 · openalex publication_date 2018/12/03 · arxiv updated 2018/12/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Immune cells learn about their antigenic targets using tactile sense: a self-organized motif named immunological synapse forms between an immune cell and an antigen-presenting cell (APC) during recognition. Via synapses, immune cells apply mechanical pulling forces to selectively extract antigen (Ag) from APCs. Curiously, depending on its stage of development, a B lymphocyte exhibits distinct synaptic patterns and uses force at different strength and timing, which appears to strongly impact its ability to distinguish Ag affinities. We use a statistical-mechanical model to study how the experimentally observed synaptic architectures can originate from normal cytoskeletal forces coupled to the lateral organization of mobile receptors, and show how this active regulation scheme, collective in nature, may enhance the efficiency and capacity of discrimination.