Cryptic self

Carayanniotis, G., The cryptic self in thyroid autoimmunity The paradigm of thyroglobulin, Autoimmunity, 36, 423, 2003. 

Shih, F.F., Cerasoli, D.M., and Caton, A.J. (1997) A major T cell determinant from the influenza virus hemagglutinin (HA) can be a cryptic self peptide in HA transgenic mice. Int. Immunol. 9,249-261. 

Figure 7-1 Activation of T cells by metal ions. Nickel and other metal ions appear to activate specific T cells by several different molecular mechanisms. (1) T cells with their T cell receptor respond to complexes of nickel with MHC-peptide similar to other hapten-peptide complexes. (2) Nickel forms a direct linker between MHC and the T cell receptor independent of the peptide with some similarities to superantigen-mediated T cell stimulation. (3) The processing of self peptides is disturbed by nickel resulting in cryptic self peptides presented to a T cell receptor.

Moudgil KD Sercarz EE (1994) The T cell repertoire against cryptic self determinants and its involvement in autoimmunity and cancer. Clin Immunol Immunopathol, 73(3) ... 

Phumichai, C., Hosaka, K. (2006). Cryptic improvement for fertility by continuous selfing of diploid potatoes using Sli gene. Euphytica, 149, 251-258. 

Foreign proteins as well as self-proteins contain dominant and cryptic epitopes (Sercarz et al., 1993 Moudgil Sercarz, 1994). Dominant epitopes of a protein are those epitopes or stretches of peptide that survive enzymatic proteolysis and in addition bind with sufficiently high affinity to MHC molecules to be presented to T cells. Peptide stretches that do not survive antigen processing (e.g. survive enzymatic splicing), that do not bind to MHC molecules, or with too low affinity remain unnoticed and are considered cryptic to... 

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