The recognition pattern of gamma-delta T cells

The main function of immune system is to recognize and respond to foreign antigens. During the course of evolution, the body has successfully developed four kinds of mechanisms to recognize antigens, including pattern recognition mediated by macrophages, missing-self and induced-self recognition for NK cells, antigen specific recognition for alphabeta T cells and B cells and "broad-spectrum specific" recognition for gammadelta T cells. The three formers have made great progress these years. However, details of antigen recognition by gammadelta T cells are still mysterious. Gammadelta T cells, a class of T cells only existing in primates, differ from alphabeta T cells in TCR diversity, the structure of TCR-CD3 complex, the tissue distribution, the antigens that they recognize and the way involved in recognition. Here, we shed light on the recognition mechanism of gammadelta T cells against several known antigens and discuss the possible response pattern along the research historical process. We put forward a recognition hypothesis for gammadelta TCR that is conformational recognition based on germline encoded recognition. The key germline encoded amino acids dominate the "putative binding box" and are responsible for recognition. Meanwhile, after gammadelta T cells are activated, several other molecules such as CD69, CD16, 2B4, NKG2D also participate in inducing cytotoxicity of activated gammadelta T cells. Obviously, the illustration of recognition mechanism for gammadelta T cells will help to comprehensively understand the whole immune system and design the higher effective multi-epitope vaccines for tumor and infection immunity.