This project was designed to generate a recombinant vaccinia virus expressing the new H5 subtype of the HA gene as part of eventually defining the CTL epitope on the avian HA protein recognized by this human T cell clone. The result was achieved by first generating a transfer vector for homologous recombination. The vector was used to generate a recombinant vaccinia virus expressing the HA gene. Expression of the HA gene product was confirmed at both transcriptional and translational levels, using RT-PCR and immunoprecipitations, respectively
