Specificity and Tolerance of the Immune T Cell Repertoire

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• Mehran Kardar (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
• Friday 12 September 2025, 09:55-10:35
• External.

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TGM150 - 9th Edwards Symposium – Frontiers in Statistical Physics and Soft Matter

The adaptive immune system protects the body from an ever-changing landscape of foreign pathogens. The two arms of the adaptive immune system, T cells and B cells, mount specific responses to pathogens by utilizing the diversity of their receptors, generated through hypermutation. T cells recognize and clear infected hosts when their highly variable receptors bind sufficiently strongly to antigen-derived peptides displayed on a cell surface. To avoid auto-immune responses, randomly generated receptors that bind strongly to self-peptides are eliminated in the “central” process of thymic selection, ensuring a mostly self-tolerant repertoire of mature T cells. “Peripheral” tolerance, including a quorum mechanism further protects against self-targeting T cells that escape thymic selection. We discuss how these mechanisms can still fail during persistent infections. 

This talk is part of the Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series series.

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