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Journal of Virology, May 2008, p. 4697-4705, Vol. 82, No. 10
0022-538X/08/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JVI.02698-07
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Department of Pathology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia 30322
Received 19 December 2007/ Accepted 29 February 2008
The CD8 coreceptor is important for positive selection of major histocompatibility complex I (MHC-I)-restricted thymocytes and in the generation of pathogen-specific T cells. However, the requirement for CD8 in these processes may not be essential. We previously showed that mice lacking β2-microglobulin are highly susceptible to tumors induced by mouse polyoma virus (PyV), but CD8-deficient mice are resistant to these tumors. In this study, we show that CD8-deficient mice also control persistent PyV infection as efficiently as wild-type mice and generate a substantial virus-specific, MHC-I-restricted, T-cell response. Infection with vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), which is acutely cleared, also recruited antigen-specific, MHC-I-restricted T cells in CD8-deficient mice. Yet, unlike in VSV infection, the antiviral MHC-I-restricted T-cell response to PyV has a prolonged expansion phase, indicating a requirement for persistent infection in driving T-cell inflation in CD8-deficient mice. Finally, we show that the PyV-specific, MHC-I-restricted T cells in CD8-deficient mice, while maintained long term at near-wild-type levels, are short lived in vivo and have extremely narrow T-cell receptor repertoires. These findings provide a possible explanation for the resistance of CD8-deficient mice to PyV-induced tumors and have implications for the maintenance of virus-specific MHC-I-restricted T cells during persistent infection.
Published ahead of print on 12 March 2008.
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