| First Author | Harrington LE | Year | 2008 |
| Journal | Nature | Volume | 452 |
| Issue | 7185 | Pages | 356-60 |
| PubMed ID | 18322463 | Mgi Jnum | J:144542 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:3831200 | Doi | 10.1038/nature06672 |
| Citation | Harrington LE, et al. (2008) Memory CD4 T cells emerge from effector T-cell progenitors. Nature 452(7185):356-60 |
| abstractText | A hallmark of adaptive immunity is the generation of memory T cells that confer long-lived, antigen-specific protection against repeat challenges by pathogens. Understanding the mechanisms by which memory T cells arise is important for rational vaccination strategies and improved therapeutic interventions for chronic infections and autoimmune disorders. The large clonal expansion of CD8 T cells in response to some infections has made the development of CD8 T-cell memory more amenable to study, giving rise to a model of memory cell differentiation in which a fraction of fully competent effector T cells transition into long-lived memory T cells. Delineation of CD4 T-cell memory development has proved more difficult as a result of limitations on tracking the smaller populations of CD4 effector T cells generated during a pathogenic challenge, complicating efforts to determine whether CD4 memory T cells are direct descendants of effector T cells or whether they develop by alternative pathways. Here, using two complementary cytokine reporter mouse models to identify interferon (IFN)-gamma-positive effector T cells and track their fate, we show that the lineage relationship between effector and memory CD4 T cells resembles that for CD8 T cells responding to the same pathogen. We find that, in parallel with effector CD8 T cells, IFN-gamma-positive effector CD4 T cells give rise to long-lived memory T cells capable of anamnestic responses to antigenic rechallenge. |
