Taurine: Energy drink for T cells
Bachmann MF.
The activation of T cells causes many cellular changes, including alterations in cell morphology, motility, and size. While all immunologists know that T cells increase their size and become “blasted” upon activation, little attention has been paid to the question of how cell size is regulated and how this process influences T‐cell responses. In this issue of the European Journal of Immunology, Kaesler et al. [Eur. J. Immunol. 2012. 42: 831‐841] demonstrate that the organic osmolyte taurine and its transporter Taut are instrumental in driving cell‐volume regulation and therefore the T‐cell response. In the absence of Taut, effector and memory T‐cell responses in mice are severely impaired, mainly due to increased apoptosis of effector cells. Hence, this paper provides an important link between the regulation of cell size and effector T‐cell responses.