T Cell Fate at the Single-Cell Level

T cell responses display two key characteristics. First, a small population of epitope-specific naive T cells expands by several orders of magnitude. Second, the T cells within this proliferating population take on diverse functional and phenotypic properties that determine their ability to exert ef...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annual review of immunology Vol. 34; pp. 65 - 92
Main Authors: Buchholz, Veit R, Schumacher, Ton N M, Busch, Dirk H
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States 20.05.2016
Subjects:
Adult Stem Cells - immunology
Animals
Biodiversity
Cell Differentiation
Cell Lineage
Cell Proliferation
Cultural Diversity
Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte - immunology
Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte - metabolism
Humans
Immunologic Memory
Immunotherapy - methods
Lymphocyte Activation
Single-Cell Analysis - methods
T-Lymphocytes - immunology
robustness
stochasticity
T cell differentiation
T cell memory
immunotherapy
stemness
ISSN:1545-3278
Online Access:Get more information
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Summary:T cell responses display two key characteristics. First, a small population of epitope-specific naive T cells expands by several orders of magnitude. Second, the T cells within this proliferating population take on diverse functional and phenotypic properties that determine their ability to exert effector functions and contribute to T cell memory. Recent technological advances in lineage tracing allow us for the first time to study these processes in vivo at single-cell resolution. Here, we summarize resulting data demonstrating that although epitope-specific T cell responses are reproducibly similar at the population level, expansion potential and diversification patterns of the offspring derived from individual T cells are highly variable during both primary and recall immune responses. In spite of this stochastic response variation, individual memory T cells can serve as adult stem cells that provide robust regeneration of an epitope-specific tissue through population averaging. We discuss the relevance of these findings for T cell memory formation and clinical immunotherapy.
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ISSN:1545-3278
DOI:10.1146/annurev-immunol-032414-112014