The memory cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) response to human cytomegalovirus infection contains individual peptide-specific CTL clones that have undergone extensive expansion in vivo.

ABSTRACT: Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV)-specific CD8(+) cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) appear to play an important role in the control of virus replication and in protection against HCMV-related disease. We have previously reported high frequencies of memory CTL precursors (CTLp) specific to the HCMV tegument protein pp65 in the peripheral blood of healthy virus carriers. In some individuals, the CTL response to this protein is focused on only a single epitope, whereas in other virus carriers CTL recognized multiple epitopes which we identified by using synthetic peptides. We have analyzed the clonal composition of the memory CTL response to four of these pp65 epitopes by sequencing the T-cell receptors (TCR) of multiple independently derived epitope-specific CTL clones, which were derived by formal s

SUBMITTER: Weekes MP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC104454 | biostudies-literature | 1999 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature