"Physiological interaction" does not explain the H-2 requirement for recognition of virus-infected cells by cytotoxic T cells

Abstract

B10.A (H-2Kk, H-2Dd) ectromelia-immune T cells from secondary responses in vitro were protent killers of both infected L929 (H-2Kk H-2Dk) and infected P-815 (H-2Kd, H-2Db) target cells. Specific competition with unlabelled targets showed that two separate T cell subsets were responsible for lysis of infected L929 and infected P-815 cells. One hypothesis to account for this (a form of "physiological interaction") is that T cells which kill one target e.g. infected L929) display only one out of two possible self-complementary recognition structures, in this example the H-2Kk alloantigen, not H-2Dd, whereas T cells that lyse infected P-815 targets display only H-2Dd, not H-2Kk. This hypothesis was tested and seems untenable because of the following results: A.TH (H-2Ks, H-2Dd) ectromelia-immune, secondary cytotoxic T cells which killed infected SJL/J (H-2Ks, H-2Ds) targets were themselves inactivated by pre-incubation with SJL/J cytotoxic T cells generated in one-way mixed lymphocyte reaction (MLR) against BALB/c (H-2Kd, H-2Dd). A.TL (H-2Ks, H-2Dd) ectromelia-immune secondary cytotoxic T cells which killed infected BALB/c targets were themselves inactivated by BALB/c cytotoxic T cells generated in MLR against SJL/J. Thus, virus-immune T cells which lyse infected targets by virtue of shared H-2K are also displaying H-2D alloantigen, and vice versa.