Monitoring antigen-specific T cells using MHC-Ig dimers.

The lack of high affinity reagents has made distinguishing T cells on the basis of antigen specificity difficult to accomplish. This unit provides protocols that utilize innovations in molecular design to permit construction of soluble multivalent MHC complexes (MHC-Ig dimers) with high avidity for cognate T cell receptors. MHC-Ig dimers display stable binding properties when they interact with antigen-specific T cells thus allowing their use in the staining of antigen-specific T cells by flow cytometry. Methods for constructing and detecting these MHC-Ig dimers are included along with protocols for applying their use for the quantitation of antigen-specific T cells.