Submitted June 2, 2006
Accepted November 22, 2006
Cartography of gene expression in CD8 single cells: novel CCR7- subsets suggest differentiation independent of CD45RA expression
Marta Monteiro*, Cesar Evaristo, Agnes Legrand, Antonino Nicoletti, and Benedita Rocha
INSERM U591, Necker Institute, Rene-Descartes Medical School, Paris, France
INSERM U681, Cordeliers Institute, Paris, France
* Corresponding author; email: marta.monteiro{at}necker.fr.
Understanding the distribution, function and lineage relationship of CD8+ T-cell subpopulations is of fundamental value for the monitoring of the immune system in several experimental and clinical situations. However, the available data concerning the description of effector and memory CD8+ subsets in humans remains rather fragmentary since different studies favored the usage of distinct and restricted sets cell surface markers and functional parameters. We associated multiple markers to subdivide CD8+ T cells into fourteen different cell types several of which were not described previously, and evaluated the co-expression of eighteen genes simultaneously in individual cells from each subset. Our results show that each subset has a defined pattern of gene expression. Moreover, effector gene expression of CCR7- cells correlated only to CD27 expression levels and CD27/CD28 co-expression, but not with CD45RA/R0 phenotypes. Our findings thus describe new CD8+ cell subsets, allow the identification of relatively homogeneous CD8+ subpopulations, provide a predictable and precise correlation between particular cell-surface markers and CD8+ T-cell functional properties and identify effector cells present in both the CCR7-CD45RA+ and CCR7-CD45R0+ compartments. The results also indicate that activated cells might modulate the expression of CD45RA/R0 asynchronously, rather than CCR7-CD45RA+ cells always issuing from CD45RA- precursors.
