1z5l: Difference between revisions

[[Image:1z5l.gif|left|200px]]<br /><applet load="1z5l" size="350" color="white" frame="true" align="right" spinBox="true"  

Natural killer T cells express a conserved, semi-invariant alphabeta T cell receptor that has specificity for self glycosphingolipids and microbial cell wall alpha-glycuronosylceramide antigens presented by CD1d molecules. Here we report the crystal structure of CD1d in complex with a short-chain synthetic variant of alpha-galactosylceramide at a resolution of 2.2 A. This structure elucidates the basis for the high specificity of these microbial ligands and explains the restriction of the alpha-linkage as a unique pathogen-specific pattern-recognition motif. Comparison of the binding of altered lipid ligands to CD1d and T cell receptors suggested that the differential T helper type 1-like and T helper type 2-like properties of natural killer T cells may originate largely from differences in their 'loading' in different cell types and hence in their tissue distribution in vivo.

1Z5L is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_complex Protein complex] structure of sequences from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus_musculus Mus musculus] with <scene name='pdbligand=NAG:'>NAG</scene>, <scene name='pdbligand=PBS:'>PBS</scene> and <scene name='pdbligand=R16:'>R16</scene> as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ligands ligands]. Full crystallographic information is available from [http://oca.weizmann.ac.il/oca-bin/ocashort?id=1Z5L OCA].  

[[Category: Savage, P B.]]

[[Category: Wilson, I A.]]

[[Category: Zajonc, D M.]]

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