Developments in two areas may prove to be valuable in addressing several unresolved questions concerning the nature of cytolytic T cells. First, techniques have been developed in the past few years that permit isolation and maintenance of cloned cytotoxic T cell lines. Second, somatic cell genetics, with the use of cell hybridization techniques, already proven to be invaluable for studies of B cells, has more recently also been used extensively for studying helper and suppressor T cells. There has been some difficulties, however, in the use of cell hybridization techniques with cytotoxic T lymphocytes. We therefore specifically aim to: 1) evaluate and improve techniques for generating functionally active CTL-hybrids and, 2) apply the improved fusion techniques to address basic questions about cytotoxic T lymphocytes. These basic questions include: a determination of whether two independently encoded receptors are present on CTL; an evaluation of whether dual functional hybrids can be obtained; the mapping of CTL function and specificity to specific chromosomes; an examination of the relationship between lytic activity and other properties such as dependence on T cell growth factor; and an analysis of the T cell repertoire to influenza hemagglutinin and comparison of this repertoire to that of B cells.
