Spleen cell have been used to analyse the prescent of SV40 T antigen (T Ag) CD8 T cell,which have been predicted in vivo by bioluminescence imaging. Therefore for a series  of transgenic mice which express a bioluminescent antigenic fusion protein which enables non-invasive monitoring of SV40 Large T fused to firefly luciferase have been generated. the fusion protein can is expresses under the control of a conditional expression cassette which can be activated by homologoues recombination. Data show that T cells can be predicted in mice dependent on antigen expression level in single transgenic mice.

Sensitivity of bioluminescent imaging in order to predict T cells could be demonstrated by analysing T cells in Cre-activtated double transgenic mice (see here), which expresses the fusion protein in the liver,  because this mice show full transgene activation, which should result in full negative selection of T-Ag specific T cells and full bioluminescent signal intensity.

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