Blood drawn for the tail vein (50 μl) was collected with heparin-coated capillary tubes (Fisher Scientific, Pittsburgh, PA). Erythrocytes were lysed using ACK lysis buffer (Invitrogen, San Diego, CA) and white blood cells were analyzed by FACS using specific antibodies12 (link). Splenic and thymic cells were isolated as described1 (link)12 (link). Cell populations were quantified by FACS on mononuclear FSC/SSC gating using anti-human CD45 (clone #2D1), CD3 (#HIT3a), CD4 (#SK3), CD8 (#RPA-T8), and CD19 (#H1B19), HLA-DR (#tu39), HLA-A2 (#BB7.2), and intracellularly stained with granzyme B (#GB11) (BD Biosciences, San Diego, CA), perforin (#B-D48, BioLegend, San Diego, CA) or FOXP3 (#PCH101, eBiosiences, San Diego, CA) Abs. HLA-A2/GIL dextramers were obtained from Immudex (Copenhagen, Denmark) and GIL-specific CD8 T cells were enumerated by FACS following the manufacturer’s instructions.
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