It has been established that insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) in nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice results from a CD4+ and CD8+ T cell-dependent autoimmune process directed against the pancreatic beta cells. The precise roles that beta cell-reactive CD8+ and CD4+ T cells play in the disease process, however, remain ill defined. Here we have investigated whether naive beta cell-specific CD8+ and CD4+ T cells can spontaneously accumulate in pancreatic islets, differentiate into effector cells, and destroy beta cells in the absence of other T cell specificities. This was done by introducing Kd- or I-Ag7-restricted beta cell-specific T cell receptor (TCR) transgenes that are highly diabetogenic in NOD mice (8.3- and 4.1-TCR, respectively), into recombination-activating gene (RAG)-2-deficient NOD mice, which cannot rearrange endogenous TCR genes and thus bear monoclonal TCR repertoires. We show that while RAG-2(-/-) 4.1-NOD mice, which only bear beta cell-specific CD4+ T cells, develop diabetes as early and as frequently as RAG-2+ 4.1-NOD mice, RAG-2(-/-) 8.3-NOD mice, which only bear beta cell-specific CD8+ T cells, develop diabetes less frequently and significantly later than RAG-2(+) 8.3-NOD mice. The monoclonal CD8+ T cells of RAG-2(-/-) 8.3-NOD mice mature properly, proliferate vigorously in response to antigenic stimulation in vitro, and can differentiate into beta cell-cytotoxic T cells in vivo, but do not efficiently accumulate in islets in the absence of a CD4+ T cell-derived signal, which can be provided by splenic CD4+ T cells from nontransgenic NOD mice. These results demonstrate that naive beta cell- specific CD8+ and CD4+ T cells can trigger diabetes in the absence of other T or B cell specificities, but suggest that efficient recruitment of naive diabetogenic beta cell-reactive CD8+ T cells to islets requires the assistance of beta cell-reactive CD4+ T cells.