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COVER PICTURE: Autoimmune gastritis involves a response to the tissue-specific antigen H⁺/K⁺-ATPase, which is highly expressed in gastric parietal cells. High-resolution 3-D imaging methods were combined with functional studies to track the acquisition and presentation of this self-antigen by dendritic cells (DCs). CD11c⁺ DCs in the gastric mucosa and in the draining gastric lymph node (LN) contain intracellular collections of H⁺/K⁺-ATPase in healthy, untreated BALB/c mice. The LN DCs also constitutively process and present this material to T cells. Laser scanning confocal microscopy was performed on gastric LN sections stained with monoclonal antibodies against H⁺/K⁺-ATPase (green) and CD11c (red). 3-D reconstructions of one CD11c⁺ DC were produced from image data in a stack of 30 individual optical sections (top image). The intracellular H⁺/K⁺-ATPase staining was visualized by electronically decreasing the opacity of the surface CD11c staining in the reconstruction (bottom image). See related article by (See Scheinecker et al., p.1079.)
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