Cross-reactive recognition of alloantigens and certain B6 mutant antigens by antigen-specific and polyclonally activated cytotoxic effector cells

Abstract

Various B6 cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) effector populations were tested for cross-reactive lysis (CRL) of unmodified third-party allogeneic as well as of various K bm and D bm mutant target cells. The effector cells were generated by in vitro stimulation of B6 spleen cells either from unprimed mice against alloantigen, Con A, or a pool of different allogeneic stimulators, or from in vivo hapten-self primed mice against trinitrophenyl (TNP)-self or N-(5-sulfonic-1-naphthyl)ethylenediame (AED)-self antigens. Except for AED-primed effector cells all CTL populations exhibited significant CRL on third-party allogeneic target cells. More importantly, these alloreactive and H-2-restricted effectors also lysed some of the K b mutants, but not others. Thus, unmodified bm1 and bm11 mutants were lysed by all of the B6 wild-type effectors, whereas bm6 and bm9 were only weakly lysed by alloreactive CTL. None of the B6 CTL populations lysed bm13 and bm14 target cells. These data indicate that (a) alloreactive and self-restricted CTL can recognize the same molecular structure of Class I antigens although the epitopes may be different; (b) CTL discriminate between a few amino acid substitutions in certain positions of the H-2 molecule, and (c) the newly generated antigenic determinants of the bm mutants allow them to be divided into three categories in terms of their allogenicity for these cross-reactive CTL populations.