IMR Press / FBS / Volume 4 / Issue 4 / DOI: 10.2741/S334

Frontiers in Bioscience-Scholar (FBS) is published by IMR Press from Volume 13 Issue 1 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.

Article
How HLA-DM works: recognition of MHC II conformational heterogeneity
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1 Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205 USA
2 Graduate Program in Immunology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
3 Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
4 Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA
5 Biophysics Section, Laboratory of Cell Biology, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, 20892

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

 

Front. Biosci. (Schol Ed) 2012, 4(4), 1325–1332; https://doi.org/10.2741/S334
Published: 1 June 2012
Abstract

Helper T cells respond to peptide antigens derived from exogenous sources presented by MHC II on antigen presenting cells. Antigens from pathogens are internalized by professional antigen presenting cells (APC) and processed for presentation. Certain epitopes are selected during processing as the final peptides for stimulation of T cells and are termed "immunodominant". Understanding how selection of immunodominant epitopes takes place has been a difficult task because of the complexity of the mechanisms governing both antigen processing and T cell recognition. In this review, we discuss our current understanding of HLA-DM function in peptide exchange and selection and its relevance to epitope immunodominance.

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