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Journal of Experimental Medicine, Vol 173, 25-36, Copyright © 1991 by Rockefeller University Press
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S Ehlers and KA Smith
Department of Medicine, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, New Hampshire 03756.
A simple in vitro experimental system was devised to reflect the in vivo generation of a T cell anamnestic response so that T cell differentiation could be examined at the level of lymphokine gene expression. Comparison of neonatal and adult T cells revealed that both populations expressed the genes for interleukin 2 (IL-2) and its receptor, but only adult T cells were capable of transcribing mRNAs for IL-3, IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, interferon gamma, and granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor. However, neonatal T cells could be induced to undergo functional differentiation in vitro, thereby acquiring the capacity to express the lymphokine gene repertoire characteristic for adult T cells. These data suggest that the T cells generated from neonatal blood by a primary stimulation in vitro are functionally indistinguishable from the T cells in adult blood that presumably have undergone primary stimulation in vivo. Therefore, we propose that the term "memory cell" be applied to those T cells that can be identified by their differentiated state of inducible effector-lymphokine gene expression.
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