A Ready Made killer: Preconfiguration of the chromatin landscape and fate determination for virus-specific CD8+ killer T cells
A consequence of naive CD8+ T cell activation is specific changes in phenotype, proliferation and acquisition of lineage-specific function. The precise gene regulatory mechanisms that control these changes are largely unknown. Using a combination of genome wide sequencing approaches we have examined the wholesale changes in both 3D structure and biochemical modifications associated with virus-specific CD8+ T cell differentiation in response to infection. Our data suggests that lineage-specific fate determination is largely preconfigured, or poised, within mature naive virus-specific CD8+ T cells. More importantly our data suggest that effector differentiation is in fact actively restrained within the naive state by specific molecular mechanisms, with T cell activation resulting in release of this molecular handbrake that triggers transcriptional activation of a highly regulated differentiation program that underpins induction of an optimal effector killer T cell response. Understanding these mechanisms is key for understanding not only how optimal CD8+ T cell effector function is established but it has implications for our understanding of how immunological memory is established, and how we may modulate this process for therapeutic gain.
Date: 21 November 2018, 13:30 (Wednesday, 7th week, Michaelmas 2018)
Venue: MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, Headington OX3 9DS
Venue Details: WIMM Seminar Room
Speaker: Professor Stephen Turner (Monash University)
Organising department: MRC Human Immunology Unit
Organisers: Anne Farmer (University of Oxford, NDM Experimental Medicine, RDM Investigative Medicine Division), Anne Farmer
Organiser contact email address: anne.farmer@imm.ox.ac.uk
Host: Professor Graham Ogg (University of Oxford)
Part of: MRC TIDU Wednesday Seminar Series
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Renata Sojka