Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) Class II-Peptide Complexes Arrive at the Plasma Membrane in Cholesterol-rich Microclusters

Dendritic cells (DCs) function by stimulating naive antigen-specific CD4 T cells to proliferate and secrete a variety of immunomodulatory factors. The ability to activate naive T cells comes from the capacity of DCs to internalize, degrade, and express peptide fragments of antigenic proteins on their surface bound to MHC class II molecules (MHC-II). Although DCs express tens of thousands of distinct MHC-II, very small amounts of specific peptide-MHC-II complexes are required to interact with and activate T cells. We now show that stimulatory MHC-II I-Ak-HEL(46-61) complexes that move from intracellular antigen-processing compartments to the plasma membrane are not randomly distributed on the DC surface. Confocal immunofluorescence microscopy and quantitative immunoelectron microscopy reveal that the majority of newly generated MHC-II I-Ak-HEL(46-61) complexes are expressed in sub-100-nm microclusters on the DC membrane. These microclusters are stabilized in cholesterol-containing microdomains, and cholesterol depletion inhibits the stability of these clusters as well as the ability of the DCs to function as antigen-presenting cells. These results demonstrate that specific cohorts of peptide-MHC-II complexes expressed on the DC surface are present in cholesterol-dependent microclusters and that cluster integrity is important for antigen-specific naive CD4 T cell activation by DCs.