FIG. 3.

Stimulation of murine lymphocytes with recombinant antigens. (A) IFN-γ production by unfractionated LN cells. (B) Proliferation of purified CD4⁺ cells. (C) IFN-γ production by CD4⁺ cells. Axillary LN cells from naive (light bars) and vaccinated (dark bars) mice were cultivated with medium alone or in the presence of 15 μg of SWAP per ml. FABP and calpain were used at 10 μg/ml. A total of 264 antigens derived from the protein library were purified into 22 pools, each containing 12 randomly isolated cDNA clones. These were used for stimulation assays at concentrations corresponding to ca. 4 ml of bacterial culture per well (final antigen concentrations of about 10 to 50 μg/ml). The results shown for pools 2 and 7 represent typical results for different pools. Bacteria carrying the empty cloning vector, pEcoK-5, were included in the purification protocol to check for copurified bacterial contamination. The data represent the mean values of stimulation assays performed in triplicate.