Transmembrane helical interactions and the assembly of the T cell receptor complex.

Studies of the subunit interactions of the multicomponent T cell antigen receptor (TCR) revealed that specific pairs of chains have the ability to assemble after transfection into fibroblasts. For one such pair, TCR-alpha and CD3-delta, their ability to assemble was encoded by their transmembrane domains. The specificity of this interaction suggests that well-defined helical interactions in the membrane can explain the assembly of some multichain membrane complexes.