Rick,
> Have anergic T cells really
> been removed from the pool? Or, can an anergic T cell be somehow
> "re-activated"?
my understanding of this point is that the state of anergy (if that is a
unique state) can be reset by replication, and that if you drive the
replication of "anergised" T cells eg with high levels of IL-2 then they
regain responsiveness. Given time it appears this happens anyway, though
whether this represents random replication of the T cells I do not know.
My caveat to the "state of anergy" is that there appears to be at least
two ways to induce nonresponsiveness in T cells, one the classical
jenkins/schwartz/ashwell (lack of costimulator) method and the other the
allen (suboptimal peptide) method. From their Nature paper,
(Sloan-Lancaster et al - sorry can't remember the reference off the top of
my head), Paul Allen's method appeared to involve different signals and not
to be rescuable by exogenous costimulator. Whether T cells rendered
nonresponsive by this latter method can recover, again I do not know.
Paul
--
Paul J Travers phone : +44-(0)71-631-6262 (office)
ICRF Structural Biology Unit " " " 6268 (lab)
Birkbeck College fax : +44-(0)71-436-8918
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HX email : p_travers at icrf.icnet.uk
England or : paul at histo.cryst.bbk.ac.uk
