The cloning of T lymphocytes

A new era of cellular immunology is clearly at hand. It is now possible, with a little bit of effort, to isolate monoclonal populations of T cells specific for any given antigen. The implications o f this technological advance are enormous in terms of applications to basic research and clinical medicine. In this article the two basic approaches that have been used to clone T lymphocytes are outlined, the pros and cons of each technique discussed and examples are given of recent experiments which have exploited this technology to gain new insights into T-cell specificity.