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From the * Department of Pediatrics, Although lymphoid dendritic cells (DC) are thought to play an essential role in T cell activation, the initial physical interaction between antigen-bearing DC and antigen-specific T cells
has never been directly observed in vivo under conditions where the specificity of the responding T cells for the relevant antigen could be unambiguously assessed. We used confocal microscopy to track the in vivo location of fluorescent dye-labeled DC and naive TCR transgenic
CD4+ T cells specific for an OVA peptide-I-Ad complex after adoptive transfer into syngeneic
recipients. DC that were not exposed to the OVA peptide, homed to the paracortical regions
of the lymph nodes but did not interact with the OVA peptide-specific T cells. In contrast, the
OVA peptide-specific T cells formed large clusters around paracortical DC that were pulsed in
vitro with the OVA peptide before injection. Interactions were also observed between paracortical DC of the recipient and OVA peptide-specific T cells after administration of intact
OVA. Injection of OVA peptide-pulsed DC caused the specific T cells to produce IL-2 in
vivo, proliferate, and differentiate into effector cells capable of causing a delayed-type hypersensitivity reaction. Surprisingly, by 48 h after injection, OVA peptide-pulsed, but not unpulsed DC disappeared from the lymph nodes of mice that contained the transferred TCR
transgenic population. These results demonstrate that antigen-bearing DC directly interact with naive antigen-specific T cells within the T cell-rich regions of lymph nodes. This interaction results in T cell activation and disappearance of the DC.
Department of Microbiology, and the § Center for Immunology,
University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455
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