The Journal of Experimental Medicine
Torrey Pines Biolabs
  Home | Help | Feedback | Subscriptions | Archive | Search | Table of Contents
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF, 150K)
Right arrow PPT slides of all figures
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new content in the JEM
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via CrossRef
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Bousso, P.
Right arrow Articles by Abastado, J.-P.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Bousso, P.
Right arrow Articles by Abastado, J.-P.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Facebook   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?
© The Rockefeller University Press, 0022-1007/1999/5/1591/ $5.00
The Journal of Experimental Medicine, Volume 189, Number 10, May 17, 1999 1591-1600

Articles

The Composition of a Primary T Cell Response Is Largely Determined by the Timing of Recruitment of Individual T Cell Clones

Philippe Bousso, Jean-Pierre Levraud, Philippe Kourilsky, and Jean-Pierre Abastado

From the Unité de Biologie Moléculaire du Gène, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U277 and Institut Pasteur, 75724 Paris, France

Primary T cell responses rely on the recruitment and proliferation of antigen-specific T cell precursors. The extent of expansion of each individual T cell clone may depend on (a) its frequency before immunization, (b) its proliferative capacity, and (c) the time at which it first encounters its cognate antigen. In this report, we have analyzed the relative contribution of each of these parameters to the shaping of immune repertoires in the T cell response specific for the epitope 170-179 derived from HLA-Cw3 and presented by Kd. By means of hemisplenectomy, we compared immune and naive repertoires in the same animal and found that the frequency of all expanded T cell clones was extremely low before immunization. In particular, the most expanded clones did not derive from high-frequency precursors. In addition, recruited T cells were found to proliferate at the same rate, irrespective of their T cell antigen receptor sequence. Finally, we showed that only T cells that encounter the antigen at early time points account for a significant part of the specific response. Therefore, the contribution of a T cell clone to the immune response is mostly determined by the time of its entry into the immune repertoire, i.e., the time of first cell division after antigen encounter.

Key Words: clonal expansion • CD8 T cells • primary response • antigen-specific repertoire • major histocompatibility complex–peptide tetramers

Address correspondence to Philippe Bousso, Institut Pasteur, Unité de Biologie Moléculaire du Gène, INSERM U277-Institut Pasteur, 25 rue du Dr. Roux, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France. Phone: 33-1-40-61-32-03; Fax: 33-1-45-68-85-48; E-mail: bousso{at}pasteur.fr

Abbreviations used: aa, amino acid(s); EI, expansion index.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Facebook Facebook   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:



  Home | Help | Feedback | Subscriptions | Archive | Search
TABLE OF CONTENTS