Recruitment of Antigen-Specific CD8+ T Cells in Response to Infection Is Markedly Efficient
Jeroen W. J. van Heijst,1
Carmen Gerlach,1
Erwin Swart,1
Daoud Sie,2
Cláudio Nunes-Alves,3
Ron M. Kerkhoven,2
Ramon Arens,1,*
Margarida Correia-Neves,3
Koen Schepers,1,
Ton N. M. Schumacher1,
The magnitude of antigen-specific CD8
+ T cell responses is not
fixed but correlates with the severity of infection. Although
by definition T cell response size is the product of both the
capacity to recruit naïve T cells (clonal selection) and
their subsequent proliferation (clonal expansion), it remains
undefined how these two factors regulate antigen-specific T
cell responses. We determined the relative contribution of recruitment
and expansion by labeling naïve T cells with unique genetic
tags and transferring them into mice. Under disparate infection
conditions with different pathogens and doses, recruitment of
antigen-specific T cells was near constant and close to complete.
Thus, naïve T cell recruitment is highly efficient, and
the magnitude of antigen-specific CD8
+ T cell responses is primarily
controlled by clonal expansion.
2 Central Microarray Facility, Netherlands Cancer Institute, 066 CX Amsterdam, Netherlands.
3 Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), School of Health Sciences, University of Minho, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal.
* Present address: La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
Present address: Institute for Regeneration Medicine, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: t.schumacher{at}nki.nl
