Altered CD8+ T cell immunodominance after vaccinia virus infection and the naive repertoire in inbred and F1 mice

Abstract

Previous studies of CD8+ T cell immunodominance after primary virus infection of F1 mice compared with their inbred parents have generally concluded that no dramatic changes occur. In this study, we revisit this issue using vaccinia virus (VACV), which has a large genome, a recently defined immunodominance hierarchy in mice, and is a candidate vector for vaccines.We found that immunogenicity of VACV peptides defined using inbred mice was highly variable in F1 progeny: some peptides were equally immunogenic in F1 and inbred, whereas others elicited responses that were reduced by >90% in F1 mice. Furthermore, the dominance of a peptide in the relevant inbred parent did not predict whether it would be poorly immunogenic in F1 mice. This result held using F1 hybrids of MHC-congenic mice, suggesting that MHC differences alone were responsible. It was also extended to foreign epitopes expressed by an rVACVvaccine. F 1 mice were less able to mount responses to the poorly immunogenic peptides when used as a sole immunogen, ruling out immunodomination. In addition, conserved TCR Vβ usage between inbred and F1 mice did not always correlate with strong responses in F1 mice. However, direct estimation of naive precursor numbers showed that these were reduced in F1 compared with inbred mice for specificities that were poorly immunogenic in the hybrids. These data have implications for our understanding of the extent to which MHC diversity alters the range of epitopes that are immunogenic in outbred populations.