Single cell behavior in T cell differentiation

•Upon antigen encounter, proliferating T cells diversify in function and phenotype.•Lineage tracing demonstrates that the output of individual T cells is highly variable.•Reproducibility of T cell responses is due to the averaging of disparate single cell behaviors.•Variability in T cell output may...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Trends in immunology Vol. 35; no. 4; pp. 170 - 177
Main Authors: Rohr, Jan C., Gerlach, Carmen, Kok, Lianne, Schumacher, Ton N.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.04.2014
Elsevier Limited
Subjects:
Allergy and Immunology
Animals
Antigens
Apoptosis
asymmetric cell division
Asymmetry
Behavior
Cell Differentiation - immunology
Cell division
cell-extrinsic signals
cellular heterogeneity
Daughters
Epigenetics
Humans
Immunology
Infections
Lymphocyte Activation - immunology
Lymphocytes
Population
population asymmetry
single-cell tracking
Stem cells
Studies
T cell differentiation
T-Lymphocytes - cytology
T-Lymphocytes - immunology
asymmetric cell division
cellular heterogeneity
cell-extrinsic signals
single-cell tracking
population asymmetry
T cell differentiation
ISSN:1471-4906, 1471-4981, 1471-4981
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:•Upon antigen encounter, proliferating T cells diversify in function and phenotype.•Lineage tracing demonstrates that the output of individual T cells is highly variable.•Reproducibility of T cell responses is due to the averaging of disparate single cell behaviors.•Variability in T cell output may be driven by cell-intrinsic or cell-extrinsic mechanisms. Upon primary infection, naïve T cells that recognize their cognate antigen become activated, proliferate, and simultaneously differentiate into various subsets. A long-standing question in the field has been how this cellular diversification is achieved. Conceptually, diverse cellular output may either arise from every single cell or only from populations of naïve cells. Furthermore, such diversity may either be driven by cell-intrinsic heterogeneity or by external, niche-derived signals. In this review, we discuss how recently developed technologies have allowed the analysis of the mechanisms underlying T cell diversification at the single cell level. In addition, we outline the implications of this work on our understanding of the formation of immunological memory, and describe a number of unresolved key questions in this field.
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ISSN:1471-4906
1471-4981
1471-4981
DOI:10.1016/j.it.2014.02.006