Cytolytic T lymphocyte precursor cells in congenitally athymic C57BL/6 nu/nu mice: quantitation, enrichment, and specificity.
Open Access
- 1 March 1981
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in The Journal of Immunology
- Vol. 126 (3) , 871-876
- https://doi.org/10.4049/jimmunol.126.3.871
Abstract
A sensitive limiting dilution microculture system was used to obtain minimal estimates of the frequency of CTL precursor cells (CTL-P) in spleens from 5- to 14-mo-old C57BL/6 nu/nu mice. Frequency determinations of CTL-P directed against H-2d alloantigens ranged from 1/159,000 to 1/12,400. The relatively low frequency of CTL-P was enriched nearly 10-fold (to 1/2300) by passage of nude spleen cells over a column of nylon wool. After priming nude spleen cells for 7 days in conventional MLC, 1 to 3% of the MLC cells could be operationally identified as CTL-P. Furthermore, the progeny of MLC-primed nude CTL-P were specifically cytolytic for target cells of the strain used for priming. Such a system may be useful for analyzing the specificity repertoires of cells of the T cell lineage that have not undergone thymic influence.This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: