Godinho-Silva, CristinaMarques, SofiaFontinha, DianaVeiga-Fernandes, HenriqueStevenson, Philip G.Simas, J Pedro2022-02-102022-02-102014PLoS Pathog. 2014 Jun 26;10(6):e10042201553-7366http://hdl.handle.net/10451/51219Copyright: © 2014 Godinho-Silva et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Persistent infections are subject to constant surveillance by CD8+ cytotoxic T cells (CTL). Their control should therefore depend on MHC class I-restricted epitope presentation. Many epitopes are described for γ-herpesviruses and form a basis for prospective immunotherapies and vaccines. However the quantitative requirements of in vivo immune control for epitope presentation and recognition remain poorly defined. We used Murid Herpesvirus-4 (MuHV-4) to determine for a latently expressed viral epitope how MHC class-I binding and CTL functional avidity impact on host colonization. Tracking MuHV-4 recombinants that differed only in epitope presentation, we found little latitude for sub-optimal MHC class I binding before immune control failed. By contrast, control remained effective across a wide range of T cell functional avidities. Thus, we could define critical engagement thresholds for the in vivo immune control of virus-driven B cell proliferation.engjournal article10.1371/journal.ppat.10042201553-7374