THE MHC CLASS I-RESTRICTED T-CELL RESPONSE TO SENDAI VIRUS-INFECTION IN C57BL/6 MICE - A SINGLE IMMUNODOMINANT EPITOPE ELICITS AN EXTREMELY DIVERSE REPERTOIRE OF T-CELLS

We have used Sendai virus infection of C57BL/6 mice as a model with which to study the T cell response to a single MHC class I epitope. Cells taken from the bronchoalveolar lavage or restimulated in vitro from the mediastinal lymph nodes of virus-infected mice were strongly cytotoxic for a single nucleoprotein epitope, NP324-332/K-b. TO correlate TCR usage with specificity for the immunodominant epitope, we generated T cell hybridomas from the bronchoalveolar lavage and mediastinal lymph node cells of C57BL/6 mice at the peak of infection. Altogether, 20 hybridomas were identified that specifically secreted IL-2 in response to NP324-332-pulsed L929-K-b cells. TCR usage in this panel of hybridomas was extremely diverse. Over half of the available J(beta) and V-beta elements present in the C57BL/6 strain of mouse were represented in the hybridomas. Similarly, V-alpha usage was also diverse and all 12 of the alpha chains sequenced used distinct J(alpha) elements. The only relatively conserved feature of the TCR in these hybridomas was the presence of an arginine residue in the junctions of 70% of the beta chains. These data demonstrate that a diverse repertoire of TCR is able to recognize a single MHC class I epitope. Moreover, the data demonstrate that mice make use of this potential diversity in the primary response to a natural viral infection.