The goals of this group are to identify the structure and the regulated expression of the T cell antigen receptor complex. In addition, an important component to the work of this group is to utilize mutants, combined with recombinant DNA technology, to begin to establish structure/function relations for this important immunologic receptor. This group has used gene transection studies to try to address the subunit interactions within the receptor complex. One of the major themes of this group is the identification of specific molecular motifs that are responsible for the assembly, intracellular targeting and function of the receptor. This work has led to the important concept of heterophilic membrane sequences in driving protein interactions and in determining the intracellular fate of membrane proteins. Major advances have been made in the identification of motifs contained within two of the T cell receptor chains that are independently responsible for the signalling events that lead to T cell activation.
