[HTML][HTML] Transcriptional analysis of T cells resident in human skin

J Li, M Olshansky, FR Carbone, JZ Ma - PLoS One, 2016 - journals.plos.org
J Li, M Olshansky, FR Carbone, JZ Ma
PLoS One, 2016journals.plos.org
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 …
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.
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