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The role of the interaction of LCK with CD4/CD8 coreceptors
Cesneková, Michaela ; Štěpánek, Ondřej (advisor) ; Černý, Jan (referee)
LCK kinase is an essential regulator of T-cell signalling that interacts with CD4 and CD8 coreceptors, which are crucial for T-cell development and T-cell lineage commitment. Their role, as well as the role of their interaction with LCK in the peripheral T cells, remains disputable, despite being studied for decades. This thesis aims to investigate the importance of LCK-coreceptor interaction in CD8+ T cell signalling and development and to determine the significance of the serine residues in LCK-mediated CD4 endocytosis. We used LCK variants bearing mutations of the coreceptor binding site or its catalytic domain in both mice and cell lines to solve this perplexity. First, the enzymatic activity of LCK variants was evaluated in this thesis. Second, we demonstrate that the function of CD8 is both, LCK-CD8 interaction dependent and independent. Then we examined the late stage of CD8+ T cell development, showing that the absence of the interaction has very mild consequences. It affects only the response of post- selection CD8 single-positive, but not double-positive, thymocytes to sub-optimal antigenic stimulation. Finally, we observed that CD4 with the mutation of all three intracellular serines to alanines shows similar LCK-dependency as wild type CD4. Overall, this study sheds light on the...
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