Department of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
Sci Immunol. 2020 May 15;5(47). doi: 10.1126/sciimmunol.aaz6894.
During an immune response to microbial infection, CD8 T cells give rise to distinct classes of cellular progeny that coordinately mediate clearance of the pathogen and provide long-lasting protection against reinfection, including a subset of noncirculating tissue-resident memory (T) cells that mediate potent protection within nonlymphoid tissues. Here, we used single-cell RNA sequencing to examine the gene expression patterns of individual CD8 T cells in the spleen and small intestine intraepithelial lymphocyte (siIEL) compartment throughout the course of their differentiation in response to viral infection. These analyses revealed previously unknown transcriptional heterogeneity within the siIEL CD8 T cell population at several stages of differentiation, representing functionally distinct T cell subsets and a subset of T cell precursors within the tissue early in infection. Together, these findings may inform strategies to optimize CD8 T cell responses to protect against microbial infection and cancer.
在针对微生物感染的免疫反应中，CD8 T 细胞产生了不同类别的细胞后代，这些细胞后代协同介导病原体的清除，并提供针对再感染的长期保护，包括一小部分非循环组织驻留记忆 (T) 细胞，它们在非淋巴组织中发挥强大的保护作用。在这里，我们使用单细胞 RNA 测序技术，在病毒感染过程中，检测单个 CD8 T 细胞在脾脏和小肠上皮内淋巴细胞 (siIEL) 区室中的基因表达模式。这些分析揭示了在分化的几个阶段，siIEL CD8 T 细胞群体内以前未知的转录异质性，代表了功能不同的 T 细胞亚群和组织中感染早期的 T 细胞前体的一部分。总的来说，这些发现可能为优化 CD8 T 细胞反应以预防微生物感染和癌症提供策略。
