Finally, it is encouraging that natural wild-type HCMV infection induces HLA-E-restricted CD8+ T-cells, which can recognise the HLA-E-presented UL40-derived VL9 peptide and kill HCMV-infected cells [68,69] demonstrating that there are sufficient VL9-loaded HLA-E molecules on the cell surface for the CD8+ T-cells to exert their effector function. Here, CD8A is linked to cytomegalovirus infection.