趋化因子在调节T细胞免疫功能中发挥重要作用。5月27日Nature杂志在线发表了Tajie H. Harris等的研究论文，进一步揭示了趋化因子CXCL10调节CD8+T细胞功能的机制，并发现了此类细胞新的运动方式。
利用多光子显微镜技术，研究者在大脑慢性感染弓形虫的小鼠模型中发现，CXCL10通过两种不同的方式增强T细胞的功能：其一，保持效应性T细胞在大脑中的数目；其二，加快此类细胞的平均迁徙速度。
令人惊讶的是，CD8+T细胞在大脑内迁徙过程中的运动模式不是Brownian式的而是Lévy式的。据这项研究模型，Lévy式运动模式大大提高了T细胞发现稀有目标的效率，比Brownian模式增加了一个数量级。CD8+T细胞的运动行为方式类似于贻贝、海洋捕食者及猴子，而CXCL10帮助CD8+T细胞加快了找到稀有目标的速度。(生物谷bioon.com）
doi:10.1016/j.cell.2011.10.017
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PMID:
Generalized Lévy walks and the role of chemokines in migration of effector CD8+ T cells
Tajie H. Harris,1 Edward J. Banigan,2 David A. Christian,1 Christoph Konradt,1 Elia D. Tait Wojno,1 Kazumi Norose,3 Emma H. Wilson,4 Beena John,1 Wolfgang Weninger,5, 6 Andrew D. Luster,7 Andrea J. Liu2 & Christopher A. Hunter1
Chemokines have a central role in regulating processes essential to the immune function of T cells1, 2, 3, such as their migration within lymphoid tissues and targeting of pathogens in sites of inflammation. Here we track T cells using multi-photon microscopy to demonstrate that the chemokine CXCL10 enhances the ability of CD8+ T cells to control the pathogen Toxoplasma gondii in the brains of chronically infected mice. This chemokine boosts T-cell function in two different ways: it maintains the effector T-cell population in the brain and speeds up the average migration speed without changing the nature of the walk statistics. Notably, these statistics are not Brownian; rather, CD8+ T-cell motility in the brain is well described by a generalized Lévy walk. According to our model, this unexpected feature enables T cells to find rare targets with more than an order of magnitude more efficiency than Brownian random walkers. Thus, CD8+ T-cell behaviour is similar to Lévy strategies reported in organisms ranging from mussels to marine predators and monkeys4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and CXCL10 aids T cells in shortening the average time taken to find rare targets.
