Comparison of the features of the gB-8p-specific CD8+ TCRβ repertoires for primary and secondary responses.

<p>The features of the gB-8p-specific TCRβ repertoires involved in the primary responses to VACV-gB in neonatal and adult mice and the secondary responses to HSV-1 in neonatal-vaccinated and adult-vaccinated mice. Shown are the percentage of gB-8p-specific CD8+ T cells per mouse that use the Vβ10 gene (A); the percentage of unique gB-8p-specific Vβ10+ TCRβ nucleotide (n.t.) clonotypes per mouse requiring no nucleotide additions (B); and the number of different TCRβ amino acid clonotypes (C), estimated for a standard sample size of 48 sequences per gB-8p-specific Vβ10+ TCRβ repertoire. The horizontal lines indicate the median values per age/infection group. A Mann-Whitney test was used for each of the pairwise comparisons between (i) primary and secondary responses in mice primarily challenged as adults, (ii) primary and secondary responses in mice primarily challenged as neonates, (iv) primary responses in adult and neonate mice, and (iv) secondary responses in adult-vaccinated and neonatal-vaccinated mice. Statistical significance was determined at p<0.0125 (*), using Bonferroni correction for multiple pairwise comparisons. The data shown for the neonatal and adult CD8+ T cell responses to primary infection were obtained in previous studies <a href="http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.1003572#ppat.1003572-Rudd1" target="_blank">[11]</a>, <a href="http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.1003572#ppat.1003572-Rudd2" target="_blank">[12]</a> and shown here for comparison with the secondary CD8+ T cell responses.