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Researchers led by Professor Christoph Hess, from the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel and the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge, have discovered that T cells can eliminate abnormal or infected cells efficiently only in a magnesium-rich environment.
Specifically, magnesium is important for the function of a T cell surface protein called LFA-1.
LFA-1 acts as a docking site, which plays a key role in the activation of T cells.
“However, in the inactive state this docking site is in a bent conformation and thus cannot efficiently bind to infected or abnormal cells,” Christoph Hess explained.
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