'Physiological interaction' does not explain the H 2 requirement for recognition of virus infected cells by cytotoxic T cells

Abstract

B10.A (H 2K(k), H 2D(d)) ectromelia immune T cells from secondary responses in vitro were potent killers of both infected L929 (H 2K(k), H 2D(k)) and infected P 815 (H 2K(d), H 2D(d)) target cells. Specific competition with unlabelled targets showed that two separate T cell subsets were responsible for lysis of infected L929 and infected P 815 cells. One hypothesis to account for this (a form of 'physiological interaction') is that T cells which kill one target (e.g. infected L929) display one out of two possible self complementary recognition structures, in this example the H 2K(k) alloantigen, not H 2D(d), whereas T cells that lyse infected P 815 targets display only H 2D(d), not H 2K(k). ..