The structural basis for recognition of HLA-E by both innate and adaptive immune systems.

生物化学和结构生物学可以用来理解和可视化分子的三维形状以及它们与其他分子相互作用的方式。我们将使用这些方法来了解免疫系统的各种细胞如何识别HLA-E蛋白。这种蛋白质通常存在于健康细胞的表面，但它经常保留在肿瘤和感染病毒的细胞内。这是免疫系统杀死这些细胞的信号。然而，为了避免被免疫系统识别，一些病毒已经开发出维持HLA-E表达的方法。这项资助将试图确切地了解免疫系统如何识别HLA-E，以及它如何区分健康细胞表达的HLA-E与病毒感染细胞表达的HLA-E。

Biochemistry and structural biology can be used to understand and visualize the three dimesional shape of molecules and the way they interact with other molecules. We will use these approaches to understand how various cells of the immune system recognise the protein HLA-E. This protein is normally present on the surface of healthy cells while it frequently retained inside both tumours and cells infected with viruses. This acts a signal for the immune system to kill these cells. However to avoid being recognized by the immune system some viruses have developed ways to maintain HLA-E expression. This grant will attempt to understand exactly how the immune sytem recognizes HLA-E and how it discriminates between HLA-Eexpressed by healthy cells compared with HLA-E expressed by a virus-infected cell.