An understanding of the immunological footprint of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) CD4 T cell recognition is still incomplete.Here we report that human Th1 cells specific for MTB are largely contained in a CXCR3(+)CCR6(+) memory subset and highly focused on Loft Drawer Storage three broadly immunodominant antigenic islands, all related to bacterial secretion systems.Our results refute the notion that secreted antigens act as a decoy, since both secreted proteins and proteins comprising the secretion system itself are targeted by a fully functional T cell response.
In addition, several novel T cell antigens were identified which can be of potential diagnostic use, or as vaccine antigens.These results Lumbar Support underline the power of a truly unbiased, genome-wide, analysis of CD4 MTB recognition based on the combined use of epitope predictions, high throughput ELISPOT, and T cell libraries using PBMCs from individuals latently infected with MTB.