Thomson S A, Khanna R, Gardner J, Burrows S R, Coupar B, Moss D J, Suhrbier A
Queensland Institute of Medical Research, P.O. Box Royal Brisbane Hospital, Australia.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1995 Jun 20;92(13):5845-9. doi: 10.1073/pnas.92.13.5845.
The epitopes recognized by CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) are generated from cytosolic proteins by proteolytic processing. The nature of the influences exerted by the sequences flanking CTL epitopes on these processing events remains controversial. Here we show that each epitope within an artificial polyepitope protein containing nine minimal CD8+ CTL epitopes in sequence was processed and presented to appropriate CTL clones. Natural flanking sequences were thus not required to direct class I proteolytic processing. In addition, unnatural flanking sequences containing other CTL epitopes did not interfere with processing. The ability of every CTL epitope to be effectively processed from a protein containing only CTL epitopes is likely to find application in the construction of recombinant polyepitope CTL vaccines.
CD8+ 细胞毒性T淋巴细胞（CTL）识别的表位是通过蛋白水解加工从胞质蛋白产生的。CTL表位侧翼序列对这些加工事件的影响性质仍存在争议。在此，我们表明，一个人工多表位蛋白中按顺序包含九个最小CD8+ CTL表位的每个表位都经过加工，并呈递给合适的CTL克隆。因此，不需要天然侧翼序列来指导I类蛋白水解加工。此外，包含其他CTL表位的非天然侧翼序列不会干扰加工。每个CTL表位从仅含CTL表位的蛋白中有效加工的能力可能在重组多表位CTL疫苗的构建中得到应用。
