Spleens were aseptically isolated from ten mice from each group 4 weeks after challenge. Splenocyte suspensions were prepared in RPMI-1640 culture media supplemented with 10% FBS, after RBC lysis with red blood cell lysing buffer hybrid-max (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO, USA), for flow cytometry analysis, antibody secreting cell (ASC) assays and cytokine analysis. Cells were stained with trypan blue (Welgene, Daegu, South Korea) and counted with a hemocytometer chamber under a microscope. Splenocytes from each animal were resuspended in staining buffer (2% bovine serum albumin and 0.1% sodium azide in 0.1 M PBS). Cells from individual mouse were separately incubated with Fc Block (clone 2.4G2; BD Biosciences, CA, USA) to block non-specific binding at 4°C for 15 min, and then stained at 4°C for 30 min with different combinations of FITC, PE, PE-Cy5, PE-Cy7 or APC conjugated anti-CD3e (145-2c11), anti-CD4 (GK1.5), anti-CD8a (53–6.7) (BD Biosciences, CA, USA). For memory T cell responses, anti-CD44 (IM7) and anti-CD62L (MEL-14) were used (BD Biosciences, CA, USA) as indicated [28 ]. For memory B cell responses, anti-CD45R/B220 (RA3-6B2), anti-CD27 (LG-3A10) and anti-IgG1 (A85-1) were used (BD Biosciences, CA, USA) [29 (link)]. Events were acquired on BD Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer (BD Biosciences, CA, USA) and data were analyzed using C6 Analysis software (BD Biosciences, CA, USA).
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