Cross-reactivity patterns of vaccinia-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes from H-2Kbmutants

Abstract

Limit-dilution cultures were used to select vaccinia-immune T-cell populations from bml and bm3 mutant mice that were not lytic for virus-infected targets expressing the Kb and Db MHC glycoprotein. Approximately 30% of virus-immune CTL were restricted in each case to Kbm1 and Kbm3, rather than to Db. Evidence of extensive cross-reactivity was found for these virus-immune CTL. Bm3 and bmll mice sharing one amino acid mutation from wild-type but differing by a second mutation seen only in bm3 are the most cross-reactive pair in their presentation of vaccinia. The bm1 and bm10 pair with dissimilar mutations from wild-type affecting the same CNBr fragment are also largely cross-reactive. However..