TCR stimulation strength is inversely associated with establishment of functional brain-resident memory CD8 T cells during persistent viral infection
Fig 5
Systemic infection with TagV analogue MuPyVs recruits anti-PyV CD8 T cells to the brain.
(A) Circulating TCR-V cells at day 8 p.i. show increased expression of adhesion markers CD11a and CD49d. Dashed line indicates baseline expression on naïve TCR-V cells. (B) Percentage of TCR-V cells in the spleen (left panel) and brain (right panel) at days 8 and 30 p.i. (C) gMFI of CD8, CD62L, and CD69 expression on TCR-V cells in the brain at days 8 and 30 p.i. Representative histograms shown. Gray shaded histogram refers to fluorescence-minus-one control. (D) Percentage (right panel) and number (left panel) of TCR-V cells in the brains of mice given systemic anti-CD8α or control rat IgG. (E) IFNγ and TNFα co-expression in brain-resident TCR-V cells stimulated for 5 h ex vivo with 1μM TagV peptide. Mean ± SD plotted. N = 9–15 mice from 3–5 independent experiments. *, p < 0.05; **, p, 0.005; ***, p< 0.0005; ANOVA with Tukey’s test for significance.