Virginia Tech               Complex Driven Systems (from Stat. Phys. to Life Sci.)           October 1, 2010

Thymic Selection of T-cell Receptors

as an Extreme Value Problem

T-cell & APC

Abhishek Jha, Eric Huseby, Eugene Shakhnovich

Mehran Kardar (MIT)

Andrej Kosmrlj, Arup K. Chakraborty


Outline

I.       Introduction: T-cells, receptors, thymic selection                                       

II.      Model: Binding energy, selection, extreme values, statistical physics                                    

III.     Analysis: Exterme Value Distribution, exact results         

IV.     Consequences: Amino-acid composition of TCRs, specificity in transgenic mice         

V.      Summary