CD8+ T cell self-tolerance permits responsiveness but limits tissue damage
- University of Minnesota Medical School, United States
- NIH, United States
- Agentus Therapeutics, United States
- Grand Valley State University, United States
Abstract
Self-specific CD8+ T cells can escape clonal deletion, but the properties and capabilities of such cells in a physiological setting are unclear. We characterized polyclonal CD8+ T cells specific for the melanocyte antigen tyrosinase-related protein 2 (Trp2) in mice expressing or lacking this enzyme (due to deficiency in Dct, which encodes Trp2). Phenotypic and gene expression profiles of pre-immune Trp2/Kb-specific cells were similar; the size of this population was only slightly reduced in wild-type (WT) compared to Dct-deficient (Dct-/-) mice. Despite comparable initial responses to Trp2 immunization, WT Trp2/Kb-specific cells showed blunted expansion and less readily differentiated into a CD25+ proliferative population. Functional self-tolerance clearly emerged when assessing immunopathology: adoptively transferred WT Trp2/Kb-specific cells mediated vitiligo much less efficiently. Hence, CD8+ T cell self-specificity is poorly predicted by precursor frequency, phenotype or even initial responsiveness, while deficient activation-induced CD25 expression and other gene expression characteristics may help to identify functionally tolerant cells.
Data availability
NextGen sequencing data has being deposited at GEO: Code GSE171221.
-
Non-deletional CD8+ T cell self-tolerance permits responsiveness but limits tissue damageNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE171221.
Article and author information
Author details
Emily N Truckenbrod
Funding
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (R01AI140631)
- Stephen C Jameson
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (P01AI035296)
- Stephen C Jameson
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and handled according to protocols approved but the University of Minnesota IACUC (#1709-35136A and #2007-38243A).
Copyright
This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.
Metrics
-
- 2,553
- views
-
- 242
- downloads
-
- 11
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
CD8+ T cell self-tolerance permits responsiveness but limits tissue damage
eLife 10:e65615.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.65615
Further reading
-
- Immunology and Inflammation
Macrophages control intracellular pathogens like Salmonella by using two caspase enzymes at different times during infection.
-
- Immunology and Inflammation
- Microbiology and Infectious Disease
The members of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) causing human tuberculosis comprise 10 phylogenetic lineages that differ in their geographical distribution. The human consequences of this phylogenetic diversity remain poorly understood. Here, we assessed the phenotypic properties at the host-pathogen interface of 14 clinical strains representing five major MTBC lineages. Using a human in vitro granuloma model combined with bacterial load assessment, microscopy, flow cytometry, and multiplexed-bead arrays, we observed considerable intra-lineage diversity. Yet, modern lineages were overall associated with increased growth rate and more pronounced granulomatous responses. MTBC lineages exhibited distinct propensities to accumulate triglyceride lipid droplets—a phenotype associated with dormancy—that was particularly pronounced in lineage 2 and reduced in lineage 3 strains. The most favorable granuloma responses were associated with strong CD4 and CD8 T cell activation as well as inflammatory responses mediated by CXCL9, granzyme B, and TNF. Both of which showed consistent negative correlation with bacterial proliferation across genetically distant MTBC strains of different lineages. Taken together, our data indicate that different virulence strategies and protective immune traits associate with MTBC genetic diversity at lineage and strain level.
