Digital response in T cells: to be or not to be

We have developed a single-molecule imaging technique that uses quantum dot-labeled peptide-major histocompatibility complex (pMHC) ligands to study CD4+ T cell functional sensitivity. We found that naive T cells, T cell blasts and memory T cells could all be triggered by a single pMHC to secrete tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-2 (IL-2) cytokines with a rate of ~1,000, ~10,000 and ~10,000 molecules/min respectively and that additional pMHCs did not augment secretion, indicating a digital response pattern. We also found that a single pMHC localized to the immunological synapse induced the slow formation of a long-lasting T cell receptor (TCR) cluster, consistent with a serial engagement mechanism. These data show that scaling up CD4+ T cell cytokine responses involves increasingly efficient T cell recruitment rather than greater cytokine production per cell.