Adaptive threshold-stochastic resonance (AT-SR) in MHC clusters on the cell surface

•Intuitive-phenomenological model of immune-recognition has been elaborated based on the Stochastic Resonance (SR) – noise assysted signal detection of weak signals – phenomenon.•Nonself-peptide is considered as the weak signal to be amplified, and the self-peptide is considered as an athermal noise boosting detection of noself-peptide.•SR is extended with the notion of „adaptive threshold” to explain self-nonself discrimination.•SR serves also as a basis for frequency encoding transmembrane signaling by the MHC clusters and the T-cell receptor (TcR).•We also suggest interpreting other transmembrane signaling phenomena in the framework of SR, and give recipes for identifying SR in lipid rafts on the cell surface with biophysical tools like FRET, fluorescence anisotropy, and patch-clamping. Highly conserved 2D receptor clusters (membrane rafts) of immunological signaling molecules with MHCI and MHCII antigens as their cores have been observed in the past on the surface of T- and B-cell lines of lymphoid origin, as well as on cells from patients with colon tumor and Crohn’s disease. Conservativity is related to the ever presence of MHCI molecules. Although they are suspected to play a role in maintaining these clusters and facilitating transmembrane signaling, their exact role has been left largely enigmatic. Here we are suggesting stochastic resonance (SR), or “noise-assisted signal detection”, as a general organizing principle for transmembrane signaling events evoked by processes like immune recognition and cytokine binding taking place in these clusters. In the conceptual framework of SR, in immune recognition as a prototype of transmembrane signaling, the sea of self-peptide-MHC complexes around a nonself-peptide presenting MHC is conceived as a source of quickly fluctuating unspecific signal (“athermal noise”) serving the extra energy for amplifying the weak sub-threshold specific signal of the nonself-peptide presenting MHC. This same noise is also utilized for a readjustment of the threshold – and also the sensitivity and specificity – of detection by a closed loop feedback control of the TcR-CD8 (CD4) proximity on the detecting T-cell. The weak sub threshold specific signal of nonself-peptide presenting MHC is amplified by the superposing unspecific signals of the neighboring self peptide-MHC complexes towards the T-cell receptor as the detector. Because in a successful detection event both self- and nonself-peptides are detected simultaneously, the