Figure 2.

In vitro activation and proliferative responses of spleen CD4⁺ T cells from CD6^−/− and CD6^+/+ mice to CD3 cross-linking. (A) Sorted spleen CD4⁺ T cells from untreated CD6^−/− and CD6^+/+ mice were CFSE-labeled and cultured for 3 days either alone or plastic-bound anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody (1 µg/mL) for further flow cytometry analysis. The histogram shows the CFSE fluorescence intensity from a representative experiment of four performed, at different time points. (B) CD4⁺ T cells stimulated as in (A) for 7 h were analyzed for mRNA expression levels of the indicated genes by real-time PCR. The bar charts represent quintuplicate mRNA values from six pooled mice, where ΔC_t indicates the difference in the threshold cycle between GADPH and target genes. n.s., not significant (Student’s t-test).