Figure 1.

Mycobacteria-specific T cells accumulate in the lung but not the mediastinal lymph node during immunization or infection with M. tuberculosis. C57BL/6 mice were infected via aerosol with 250 M. tuberculosis, and sacrificed at the indicated days after infection (n ≥ 5 per time point). The T cell populations in lung and MLN were analyzed. (A) Representative dot plots of tetramer Ag85B, ESAT6, and TB10.4 binding T cells in the lungs and MLN from mice 40 days after infection with M. tuberculosis are depicted. (B) The mean percentage of tetramer Ag85B, ESAT6, and TB10.4 binding cells gated within the CD44+ CD4 and CD8 T cell populations in the lung or MLN from mice (n ≥ 5 per time point) at different days after infection ± SEM are displayed. Differences in frequencies tetramer binding cells between lung and MLN at a given time point after infection are significant at *p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, and ***p ≤ 0.001 (Welch's t-test with Holm-Sidak correction for multiple comparisons). (C) The mean log₁0 transformed number of tetramer⁺ Ag85B, ESAT6 and TB10.4 cells ± SD at the indicated days after aerosol infection with M. tuberculosis. Differences in cell numbers between *Ag85B and TB10.4; # TB10.4 and ESAT6; and •-Ag85B and ESAT6 are significant at p < 0.01 and p < 0.001 (2 or 3 symbols) were calculated using Welch's t test with Holm-Sidak correction for multiple comparisons. (D) The mean frequencies of CD44+ CD4 and CD8 T cells in the lung or MLN from mice at the indicated days after infection with M. tuberculosis are shown. Differences are significant at **p ≤ 0.01, and ***p ≤ 0.001 (Welch's t-test with Holm-Sidak correction for multiple comparisons).