Transcriptional Analysis of T Cells Resident in Human Skin

Jane Li; Moshe Olshansky; Francis R Carbone; Joel Z Ma

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0148351

Transcriptional Analysis of T Cells Resident in Human Skin

PLoS One. 2016 Jan 29;11(1):e0148351. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0148351. eCollection 2016.

Authors

Jane Li^{1

2}, Moshe Olshansky¹, Francis R Carbone¹, Joel Z Ma¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Microbiology and Immunology, The University of Melbourne at The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
² Department of Medicine (St Vincent's Hospital), The University of Melbourne, Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia.

Abstract

Human skin contains various populations of memory T cells in permanent residence and in transit. Arguably, the best characterized of the skin subsets are the CD8(+) permanently resident memory T cells (TRM) expressing the integrin subunit, CD103. In order to investigate the remaining skin T cells, we isolated skin-tropic (CLA(+)) helper T cells, regulatory T cells, and CD8(+) CD103(-) T cells from skin and blood for RNA microarray analysis to compare the transcriptional profiles of these groups. We found that despite their common tropism, the T cells isolated from skin were transcriptionally distinct from blood-derived CLA(+) T cells. A shared pool of genes contributed to the skin/blood discrepancy, with substantial overlap in differentially expressed genes between each T cell subset. Gene set enrichment analysis further showed that the differential gene profiles of each human skin T cell subset were significantly enriched for previously identified TRM core signature genes. Our results support the hypothesis that human skin may contain additional TRM or TRM-like populations.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Antigens, CD / genetics
Antigens, CD / immunology
CD8 Antigens / genetics
CD8 Antigens / immunology
CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes / cytology
CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes / immunology
CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes / metabolism*
Female
Gene Expression Profiling
Gene Expression Regulation
Humans
Immunophenotyping
Integrin alpha Chains / genetics
Integrin alpha Chains / immunology
Leukocytes, Mononuclear / cytology
Leukocytes, Mononuclear / immunology
Leukocytes, Mononuclear / metabolism
Middle Aged
Molecular Sequence Annotation
Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis
Organ Specificity
Skin / cytology
Skin / immunology
Skin / metabolism*
T-Lymphocytes, Helper-Inducer / cytology
T-Lymphocytes, Helper-Inducer / immunology
T-Lymphocytes, Helper-Inducer / metabolism*
T-Lymphocytes, Regulatory / cytology
T-Lymphocytes, Regulatory / immunology
T-Lymphocytes, Regulatory / metabolism*
Transcription, Genetic*

Substances

Antigens, CD
CD8 Antigens
Integrin alpha Chains
alpha E integrins

Grants and funding

The work was supported by grants from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council to FRC. JL is a recipient of the Elizabeth and Vernon Puzey Scholarship. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.