Antigen-activated T cells (red) can be spied going from place to place within the spleen.

LEFRANÇOIS/AAAS

You can learn a lot from a picture. Case in point, a new report from Kamal Khanna, Jeffrey McNamara, and Leo Lefrançois (University of Connecticut, Farmington, CT) images T cells as they prepare to fight infection.

To examine the cell dynamics of an immune response, the researchers used laser scanning microscopy to take 3D snapshots of T cells in the spleen during infection. The authors infected mice with Listeria monocytogenes that expressed a well-studied antigen, ovalbumin. They then examined the animals' spleens at different times, staining for T cells (of the CD8+ T cell subtype) that could recognize and kill cells expressing ovalbumin antigens.

Immune responses can be initiated in the spleen, which is subdivided into compartments containing different kinds of immune cells; upon infection, the authors saw...

The Rockefeller University Press
2007
The Rockefeller University Press
2007
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