We thus would like to put forward the interpretation that CD8 T cells repetitively restimulated by stochastically expressed and presented antigenic peptides in the latently infected host in a sense resemble CTLL, with the difference that CTLL also contain terminally-differentiated, cytolytic TEC, whereas ex vivo isolated viral epitope-specific CD8 T cells are cytolytically active only in the acute phase of infection but no longer during latent infection [122]. This evidence concerns the gene CD8A and infection.