The binding of the cell surface molecule CD58 (formerly lymphocyte function-associated antigen 3) to its ligand, CD2, significantly increases the sensitivity of antigen recognition by T cells. This was the first heterophilic cell adhesion interaction to be discovered and is now an important paradigm for analyzing the structural basis of cell-cell recognition. The crystal structure of a CD2-binding chimeric form of CD58, solved to 1.8-Å resolution, reveals that the ligand binding domain of CD58 has the expected Ig superfamily V-set topology and shares several of the hitherto unique structural features of CD2, consistent with previous speculation that the genes encoding these molecules arose via duplication of a common precursor. Nevertheless, evidence for considerable divergence of CD2 and CD58 is also implicit in the structures. Mutations that disrupt CD2 binding map to the highly acidic surface of the AGFCCC -sheet of CD58, which, unexpectedly, lacks marked shape complementarity to the equivalent, rather more basic CD58-binding face of human CD2. The specificity of the very weak interactions of proteins mediating cell-cell recognition may often derive largely from electrostatic complementarity, with shape matching at the protein-protein interface being less exact than for interactions that combine specificity with high affinity, such as those involving antibodies.Antibodies to CD2 and CD58 (lymphocyte function-associated antigen 3) were among the first found to block the functions of human T lymphocytes in in vitro assays (reviewed in ref. 1). The cognate ligand-receptor relationship of CD2 and CD58, the first heterophilic protein interaction to be identified at the cell surface, was directly established when purified CD2 was shown to bind to cellular CD58 (2). CD58 is expressed in both haemopoietic and nonhaemopoietic lineages, including the endothelium (3). The binding of CD2 to CD58 is known to significantly enhance the efficiency of antigen recognition in vitro (4), and studies of CD2-deficient mice indicate that the interaction of CD2 with the murine ligand CD48 influences both positive selection and T cell activation (5).The sequencing of cDNAs encoding CD58 revealed that, like CD2, the extracellular region of CD58 consists of single V-set and C2-set Ig superfamily (IgSF) domains (reviewed in ref. 6). Along with CD48 and several other molecules, CD2 and CD58 belong to a subset of the IgSF that is likely to have arisen via the duplication of an ancestral gene encoding a homophilic cell-cell recognition molecule (6).Studies of the interaction of CD2 with its ligands have been informative with respect to the mechanism(s) of proteinprotein recognition at the cell surface (reviewed in ref. 7). The crystal structures of soluble forms of rat (8) and human (9) CD2 [soluble CD2 (sCD2)] provided the initial views of the complete extracellular regions of cell adhesion molecules. This work drew attention to charged residues clustered at the ligand binding site of CD2 and to the unusual flatness of the bindin...