FIG 3.

Lytic activity of M1_58–66- and NP_383–391-specific CD8⁺ T cells against target cells transfected with various M1-NP-eGFP encoding plasmids. (A) Gating strategy used to assess the number of viable eGFP⁺ target cells. The first dot plot demonstrates a gate for the transfected target cells, the second gate demonstrates the viable cells, and the third gate demonstrates the eGFP⁺ cells. (B) Percent lytic activity exerted by the M1_58–66-specific CD8⁺ T cell clone. (C) Percent lytic activity exerted by the NP_383–391-specific CD8⁺ T cell clone. Target cells were transfected with chimeric M1-NP-eGFP fusion plasmids that encode the M1 protein of the avian A/H5N1 virus (WT avian), the M1 protein of the human A/H3N2 virus (WT human), the M1 protein of avian A/H5N1 virus with extraepitopic amino acid residues of the human A/H3N2 virus (A→H ABCDE) and the M1 protein of human A/H3N2 virus with extraepitopic amino acid residues of the avian A/H5N1 virus (H→ A ABCDE). Data points represent means and error bars indicate standard deviations (SD) for quadruplicates (n = 4). **, all groups were statistically significantly different from each other after correction for multiple hypothesis testing using a false discovery rate (FDR) of 0.01; *, only the value for the A→H ABCDE group was significantly lower.