TY - JOUR A1 - Karulin, Alexey Y. A1 - Karacsony, Kinga A1 - Zhang, Wenji A1 - Targoni, Oleg S. A1 - Moldova, Ioana A1 - Dittrich, Marcus A1 - Sundararaman, Srividya A1 - Lehmann, Paul V. T1 - ELISPOTs produced by CD8 and CD4 cells follow Log Normal size distribution permitting objective counting JF - Cells N2 - Each positive well in ELISPOT assays contains spots of variable sizes that can range from tens of micrometers up to a millimeter in diameter. Therefore, when it comes to counting these spots the decision on setting the lower and the upper spot size thresholds to discriminate between non-specific background noise, spots produced by individual T cells, and spots formed by T cell clusters is critical. If the spot sizes follow a known statistical distribution, precise predictions on minimal and maximal spot sizes, belonging to a given T cell population, can be made. We studied the size distributional properties of IFN-γ, IL-2, IL-4, IL-5 and IL-17 spots elicited in ELISPOT assays with PBMC from 172 healthy donors, upon stimulation with 32 individual viral peptides representing defined HLA Class I-restricted epitopes for CD8 cells, and with protein antigens of CMV and EBV activating CD4 cells. A total of 334 CD8 and 80 CD4 positive T cell responses were analyzed. In 99.7% of the test cases, spot size distributions followed Log Normal function. These data formally demonstrate that it is possible to establish objective, statistically validated parameters for counting T cell ELISPOTs. KW - ELISPOT KW - software KW - IFN-γ KW - IL-17 KW - T cells KW - Normal Distribution KW - spot size KW - gating KW - cytokines KW - IL-2 KW - IL-4 KW - IL-5 KW - CD8 KW - CD4 Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-149648 VL - 4 IS - 1 ER -