FIG. 3.

Cytokine production in B. burgdorferi-infected C3H hearts in the absence of αβ T cells. mRNA was extracted from 14-day-infected C3H TCR α^−/− and TCR α^+/− hearts and cDNAs generated by RT as described in Materials and Methods. Serial tenfold dilutions of the cDNA products were amplified by PCR and sized by agarose gel electrophoresis. Tubulin amplification was performed in parallel for each cytokine examined. These results are representative of three separate analyses of C3H or B6 hearts and show a relative reduction in TNF-α in TCR α^−/− hearts compared to controls (confirmed by band densitometry; data not shown).