Berlin 2018 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 63: Statistical Physics of Biological Systems II (joint session BP/DY)
DY 63.7: Vortrag
Donnerstag, 15. März 2018, 16:45–17:00, H 2013
Mechanical tuning of synaptic patterns enhances immune discrimination — •Milos Knezevic1,2 and Shenshen Wang1 — 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA — 2Institut fur Theoretische Physik, Technische Universitat Berlin, Hardenbergstr. 36, 10623 Berlin, Germany
An immunological synapse is an adhesive intercellular junction that forms between B cells and antigen-presenting cells (APCs) during recognition. This dynamic surface contact is patterned with complementary receptors and ligands on the apposing membranes, thus specifically regulating directed information transfer. Via synapses, B cells use mechanical pulling forces to extract antigen (Ag) from APCs for subsequent processing and presentation. Recent experiments show that, depending on the stage in its life cycle, a B cell exhibits distinct synaptic patterns accompanied with different strength and timing of force usage, which appears to lead to varied stringency of affinity discrimination. Using a minimal model of membrane adhesion, we study how the observed synaptic architectures can originate from normal mechanical forces coupled to lateral organization of mobile receptors, and show how this coupling might affect the efficiency and selectivity of Ag acquisition. We conclude that cytoskeletal forces could play an important role in tuning the synaptic patterns, which in turn enlarges the dynamic range of immune recognition with enhanced discrimination.