Figure 2.

Transferred OT1 cells compete against the primary response of endogenous Kb/ova8-specific CD8⁺ T cells. B6.PL mice, with or without the transfer of 0.2–1 × 10⁶ B6 OT1 transgenic T cells, were immunized with VV-ova as in the legend to Fig. 1. 9 d after infection, pooled ovary and spleen cells were stained with the Kb/ova8 tetramer as described in Materials and Methods. (A) Data were analyzed by gating on CD8⁺class II⁻ events. The dot plots were additionally gated on all Thy1.2⁻ events (R3 gate) to generate the histograms (right). The percentage given above the marker is the percentage of the total Thy1.2⁻CD8⁺ T cells staining positively for tetramer binding. Background (solid histogram) is from irrelevant tetramer staining of experimental cells. (B) Data pooled from two separate experiments demonstrating the inverse relationship between the expansion of the transferred cells and the expansion of the endogenous cells. The y-axis is the percentage of endogenous tetramer-staining cells out of all endogenous (Thy1.2⁻) cells. The x-axis is the percentage of transferred (Thy1.2⁺) cells out of both Thy1.2⁺ and Thy1.2⁻ cells. The data shown are representative of six separate experiments.