FIG 1.

Identification of rodent malaria epitope Pb2. LR-BSL13.6b reporter cells bear an NFAT-lacZ cassette and a TCRαβ pair obtained from a brain-sequestered CD8⁺ T cell from PbA-infected mice. LR-BSL13.6b cells were screened by X-Gal staining against a PbA cDNA library expressed in EL4 cells. LacZ activity was observed by X-Gal staining after subdividing the positive library pool down to a single clone (B) but not with irrelevant library pools (A). (C) Predicted epitopes from the falcilysin cDNA fragment were made into MHC tetramers and used to label LR-BSL13.6b cells, thus identifying the cognate H-2K^b epitope IITDFENL (in blue). The red histogram denotes cells stained with a representative irrelevant tetramer, with H-2K^b-VNPFFTNL tetramer shown in this case.