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Wilbur Lectureship
Seminars - Joint with Chemistry
Intercellular Communication in the Adaptive Immune System
Arup Chakraborty
Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, & Biological Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
When: Thursday, October 20, 2005
Time: 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Where: Herring Hall Auditorium
Abstract:
Higher organisms, like humans, have an adaptive immune system that can respond to pathogens that have not been encountered before. T lymphocytes (T cells) are the orchestrators of the adaptive immune response. They interact with cells, called antigen presenting cells (APC), which display molecular signatures of pathogens on their surface. T cells detect the presence of these molecular signatures of pathogens with great sensitivity. How T cells discriminate between “self” and “non-self” with extraordinary sensitivity, and how intracellular signaling leading to commitment to activation is regulated are central questions in fundamental biology. Answering these questions will also aid the development of intervention protocols for a host of diseases. I will discuss recent work where synergy between theory and computation (rooted in statistical mechanics and chemical engineering concepts) and genetic, biochemical, and imaging experiments have shed light on certain aspects of the pertinent issues.
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