Maintenance of inflationary CD8 T cells is impaired in IL-15Rα deficient hosts.
Naïve Maxi CD8 T cells were adoptively transferred into naïve C57BL/6 mice one day prior to MCMV infection. During latency, Maxi TEM cells were sorted from lungs and adoptively transferred into IL-15Rα knockout animals. Recovery of Maxi T cells was assessed in the lungs four weeks post transfer. (A) Percentage of recovered Maxi cells in the lungs normalised to Cre-negative recipients is shown in CMV-Cre Il15rafl/fl mice as mean + SEM of n = 12 mice pooled from two independent experiments. (B) Mean fluorescence intensity of Bcl-2 in Maxi cells from the lungs are shown as mean + SEM of n = 6–8 mice representative of two independent experiments. (A-B) ***p<0.001. Statistical analyses were performed using the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test.
