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Infection and Immunity, July 2004, p. 3829-3837, Vol. 72, No. 7
0019-9567/04/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.72.7.3829-3837.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Hamamatsu 431-3192, Japan
Received 15 September 2003/ Returned for modification 11 December 2003/ Accepted 9 March 2004
Both CD4+ type 1 helper T (Th1) cells and CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) play pivotal roles in protection against Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. Here, we identified Th1 and CTL epitopes on a novel protective antigen, MPT51, in BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice. Mice were immunized with plasmid DNA encoding MPT51 by using a gene gun, and gamma interferon (IFN-
) production from the immune spleen cells was analyzed in response to a synthetic overlapping peptide library covering the mature MPT51 sequence. In BALB/c mice, only one peptide, p21-40, appeared to stimulate the immune splenocytes to produce IFN-
. Flow cytometric analysis with intracellular IFN-
and the T-cell phenotype revealed that the p21-40 peptide contains an immunodominant CD8+ T-cell epitope. Further analysis with a computer-assisted algorithm permitted identification of a T-cell epitope, p24-32. In addition, a major histocompatibility complex class I stabilization assay with TAP2-deficient RMA-S cells transfected with Kd, Dd, or Ld indicated that the epitope is presented by Dd. Finally, we proved that the p24-32/Dd complex is recognized by IFN-
-producing CTL. In C57BL/6 mice, we observed H2-Ab-restricted dominant and subdominant Th1 epitopes by using T-cell subset depletion analysis and three-color flow cytometry. The data obtained are useful for analyzing the role of MPT51-specific T cells in protective immunity and for designing a vaccine against M. tuberculosis infection.
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