Maintaining Maintenance

Regular motivational boosts are needed for any repetitive task. T cells, part of the immune system, patrol tissues in the body methodically, but what keeps them sticking to their job? Researchers interested in how T-cell behaviour is maintained (and occasionally skewed such as in irritable bowel syndrome patients) examined the interaction between T cells and intestine lining cells. They showed that a particular protein, HVEM, on the surface of the lining cells, was essential for T-cell performance. In particular, the basement membrane sitting just beneath the lining required HVEM to maintain collagen (green in the cells pictured) levels and proper structure. T cells (blue) interact directly with the basement membrane, and when HVEM was absent T cells patrolled less and the intestine was more vulnerable to infection. Further studies into how HVEM impacts gut microbes more widely will help provide insights into maintaining a healthy, well protected, gut.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image by the LJI Microscopy Core from work by Goo-Young Seo, Daisuke Takahashi and Qingyang Wang, and colleagues
• La Jolla Institute for Immunology, La Jolla, CA, USA
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Science Immunology, July 2022