Visualizing dynamic microvillar search and stabilization during ligand detection by T cells

During immune surveillance, T cells survey the surface of antigen-presenting cells. In searching for peptide-loaded major histocompatibility complexes (pMHCs), they must solve a classic trade-off between speed and sensitivity. It has long been supposed that microvilli on T cells act as sensory organs to enable search, but their strategy has been unknown. We used lattice light-sheet and quantum dot–enabled synaptic contact mapping microscopy to show that anomalous diffusion and fractal orga