Cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) recognize antigens in the context of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I gene products. The T-cell receptor (TCR) that mediates this MHC-restricted antigen recognition recognizes short peptide fragments rather than the intact antigen. Presentation of peptides to the TCR may thus be a major function of the MHC. An intriguing question emerging from this model is whether peptide presentation also applies to foreign MHC antigens and which ofthe available MHC molecules can present preferentially the peptides of the foreign MHC molecule. Alloand xenoreactive CTLs might either recognize native MIC class I molecules or peptides presented by self MHC or by the foreign class I MHC itself. The finding that synthetic peptides corresponding to MHC class I regions are recognized by alloand xenoreactive CTLs suggests that recognition of foreign MHC by CTLs might involve degraded fragments presented by syngeneic class I molecules. We used MHC transgenic mice as a tool to study these questions. The CTL responses against human (HLA) antigen B27 were analyzed by using HLA-B27
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