Erin Adams, Ph.D.
Research Summary
The vertebrate immune system has evolved to recognize foreign pathogens
or disease in multitudinous ways. This function is mediated
predominately by receptors expressed on the immune cell surface that
survey their environment for the presence of non-self or altered self.
Certain innate immune cells act as the first line of defense,
immediately detecting infection or disease and initiating the
downstream cascade of an adaptive immune response. Our interests focus
on identifying the molecular recognition mechanisms of these receptors,
and furthermore characterizing the signals to which they are
responding. We are focusing on a particular cell type, gamma delta T
cells, which reside in tissue compartments that are initial sites of
infection such as the digestive and reproductive tracts, as well as the
epidermis. These cells proliferate during infection, however it is
unclear to what stimulus they are responding and what their function is
in mediating the response to infection. Our goal is to identify these
signals and characterize them both biochemically and structurally
through recombinant protein expression, biophysical analysis such as
surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and finally structurally to understand
the molecular contacts that allow the specific recognition of their
signals.
Selected Papers
Adams EJ, Chien YH and Garcia KC. (2005). "Structure of
a T cell receptor complexed with the non-classical MHC T22." Science,
308:227.
Shin S, El-Diwany R, Schaffert S, Adams EJ,
Garcia KC, Pereira P and Chien YH. (2005). "The CDR3 region is the
principal determinant of TCR specificity for an MHC class Ib
molecule." Science, 308:252.
Garcia KC and Adams EJ. (2005). "How the T cell receptor
sees antigen a structural view." Cell, 122:333
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