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Spontaneous partial loss of the OT-I transgene
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To the Editor:The use of model antigens such as ovalbumin (OVA) has been extremely beneficial to the field of immunology, and the availability of transgenic mice that have a T cell repertoire with a defined specificity has provided an important tool with which to study the selection, activation, motility and memory responses of T cells. One example of this is a transgenic strain of mice with CD8+
T cells specific for the OVA peptide of amino acids 257264 (SIINFEKL) in the context of H-2Kb (ref. 1). These SIINFEKL-specific CD8+ T cells, commonly referred to as OT-I T cells, have a T cell antigen receptor that consists of a-chain variable region 2 (Va2) and b-chain variable region 5 (Vb5), which are inherited via a single transgene1. These have been used for studies of thymic selection2, autoimmunity and tolerance3 and vaccine-induced T cell responses4, and in situations in which pathogens or tumor cells have been engineered to express OVA, they can be used as surrogates of endogenous T cell responses57. Consequently, OT-I mice have become widely used, and there are more than 1,700 publications that cite the original description of these mice.
One practical consideration of maintaining the OT-I mouse strain is that the transgene should be inherited as a whole, and therefore genotyping through the use of flow cytometry to detect either the Va2 chain or the Vb5 chain provides an...