The CD8α-PILRα interaction maintains CD8+ T cell quiescence

  • Science. 2022 May 27;376(6596):996-1001. doi: 10.1126/science.aaz8658.
Linghua Zheng  1 ,  Xue Han  1 ,  Sheng Yao  1 ,  Yuwen Zhu  1 ,  John Klement  2 ,  Shirley Wu  2 ,  Lan Ji  1 ,  Gefeng Zhu  1 ,  Xiaoxiao Cheng  1 ,  Zuzana Tobiasova  1 ,  Weiwei Yu  1 ,  Baozhu Huang  1 ,  Matthew D Vesely  1 ,  Jun Wang  1 ,  Jianping Zhang  1 ,  Edward Quinlan  1 ,  Lieping Chen  1
Affiliations
  • 1. Department of Immunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.
  • 2. Yale College, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
PMID: 35617401 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz8658
Abstract

T cell quiescence is essential for maintaining a broad repertoire against a large pool of diverse Antigens from microbes and Tumors, but the underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown. We show here that CD8α is critical for the maintenance of CD8+ T cells in a physiologically quiescent state in peripheral lymphoid organs. Upon inducible deletion of CD8α, both naïve and memory CD8+ T cells spontaneously acquired activation phenotypes and subsequently died without exposure to specific Antigens. PILRα was identified as a ligand for CD8α in both mice and humans, and disruption of this interaction was able to break CD8+ T cell quiescence. Thus, peripheral T cell pool size is actively maintained by the CD8α-PILRα interaction in the absence of antigen exposure.

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