Parsing digital or analogue TCR performance through piconewton forces.

αβ T-cell receptors (TCRs) recognize aberrant peptides bound to major histocompatibility complex molecules (pMHCs) on unhealthy cells, amplifying specificity and sensitivity through physical load placed on the TCR-pMHC bond during immunosurveillance. To understand this mechanobiology, TCRs stimulated by abundantly and sparsely arrayed epitopes (NP Quality of ligand recognition in a T-cell repertoire is revealed through application of physical load on clonal T-cell receptor (TCR)-pMHC bonds.