Fig 2. Itgal ^-/- cells do not efficiently protect against sporozoite challenge.

(A) 2 × 10⁶ Itgal ^-/- or littermate WT OT-I T cells were transferred to C57BL/6 mice 1 day before mice were challenged with 5 × 10³ P. berghei CS^5M sporozoites. 24 hours post-challenge livers were harvested from the recipient mice and controls and the parasite load assessed by RT-PCR. Data are from one of 2 similar experiments with 5-7 mice/group, assessed by one-way ANOVA with Tukey's post-test for multiple comparisons. Means and SD of log transformed data are presented. (B) EL4 target cell killing following incubation with in vitro activated Itgal ^-/- or littermate Itgal ^+/+ OT-I T cells. Data are expressed as the number of live-pulsed target cells recovered compared to the number of live-unpulsed target cells after 6 hours. Means and SD are based on 3 technical replicates, from one of two experiments, p value is the probability the IC₅₀ values are different (extra sum-of-squares F test). (C) Mice were infected with 1.5 × 10⁵ P. berghei CS^5M-GFP sporozoites, 15 hours later the mice received either 7 × 10⁶ Itgal ^-/- or littermate WT OT-I T cells labeled with CTV; 20 hours post-infection mice were prepared for imaging and a 40-micron Z-slice was taken of each parasite. Pie charts show the proportion of parasites with 0, 1 and ≥2 T cells in contact analyzed by χ ² test while (D) shows the number of T cells per parasite for each condition analyzed by Mann-Whitey U test. Data are from 3 mice receiving Itgal ^-/- cells and 4 mice receiving WT OT-I cells Bars show means and SD.