Blum Jamie E, Kong Ryan, Schulman E A, Chen Francis M, Upadhyay Rabi, Romero-Meza Gabriela, Littman Dan R, Fischbach Michael A, Nagashima Kazuki, Sattely Elizabeth S
Department of Chemical Engineering; Stanford University; Stanford, CA 94305 USA.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Stanford University; Stanford, CA 94305 USA and New York University School of Medicine; New York, NY USA.
bioRxiv. 2024 May 29:2024.05.26.593976. doi: 10.1101/2024.05.26.593976.
Food antigens elicit immune tolerance through the action of regulatory T cells (Tregs) in the intestine. Although antigens that trigger common food allergies are known, the epitopes that mediate tolerance to most foods have not been described. Here, we identified murine T cell receptors specific for maize, wheat, and soy, and used expression cloning to de-orphan their cognate epitopes. All of the epitopes derive from seed storage proteins that are resistant to degradation and abundant in the edible portion of the plant. Multiple unrelated T cell clones were specific for an epitope at the C-terminus of 19 kDa alpha-zein, a protein from maize kernel. An MHC tetramer loaded with this antigen revealed that zein-specific T cells are predominantly Tregs localized to the intestine. These cells, which develop concurrently with weaning, constitute up to 2% of the peripheral Treg pool. Bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing revealed that these cells express higher levels of immunosuppressive markers and chemokines compared to other Tregs. These data suggest that immune tolerance to plant-derived foods is focused on a specific class of antigens with common features, and they reveal the functional properties of naturally occurring food-specific Tregs.
食物抗原通过肠道中调节性T细胞(Tregs)的作用引发免疫耐受。虽然引发常见食物过敏的抗原已为人所知,但介导对大多数食物耐受的表位尚未得到描述。在此,我们鉴定了对玉米、小麦和大豆特异的小鼠T细胞受体,并利用表达克隆来确定其同源表位。所有表位均来源于种子储存蛋白,这些蛋白抗降解且在植物可食用部分含量丰富。多个不相关的T细胞克隆对19 kDaα-玉米醇溶蛋白(一种来自玉米籽粒的蛋白质)C末端的一个表位具有特异性。负载该抗原的MHC四聚体显示,玉米醇溶蛋白特异性T细胞主要是定位于肠道的Tregs。这些与断奶同时发育的细胞占外周Treg库的2%。大量和单细胞RNA测序显示,与其他Tregs相比,这些细胞表达更高水平的免疫抑制标志物和趋化因子。这些数据表明,对植物源性食物的免疫耐受集中于一类具有共同特征的特定抗原,并且揭示了天然存在的食物特异性Tregs的功能特性。