Inventories of Naive and Tolerant Mouse CD4 T Cell Repertoires Reveal a Hierarchy of Deleted and Diverted T Cell Receptors
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Inventories of naive and tolerant mouse CD4 T cell repertoires reveal a hierarchy of deleted and diverted T cell receptors Tobias Hasslera, Emanuel Urmanna, Sebastian Teschnera, Christine Federlea, Thamotharampillai Dileepanb, Kilian Schoberc, Marc K. Jenkinsb, Dirk H. Buschc,d, Maria Hinterbergera,1, and Ludger Kleina,1,2 aInstitute for Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, 82152 Planegg-Martinsried, Germany; bCenter for Immunology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455; cInstitute for Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Hygiene, Technische Universität München, 81675 Munich, Germany; and dGerman Center for Infection Research, 81675 Munich, Germany Edited by Shimon Sakaguchi, WPI Immunology Frontier Research Center, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, and approved August 5, 2019 (received for review May 2, 2019) – Deletion or Treg cell differentiation are alternative fates of autore- deletional tolerance (14 17), also shapes the Treg cell repertoire active MHCII-restricted thymocytes. How these different modes (18–20). of tolerance determine the size and composition of polyclonal co- MHCII tetramers were employed to trace minute cohorts of horts of autoreactive T cells with shared specificity is poorly un- CD4 T cells when their cognate antigens were transgenically derstood. We addressed how tolerance to a naturally expressed expressed to emulate a ubiquitous or TRA-like expression pat- autoantigen of the central nervous system shapes the CD4 T cell tern (21, 22). Widespread antigen expression was associated with repertoire. Specific cells in the tolerant peripheral repertoire either deletion, whereas a more restricted TRA-like expression ensued + + were Foxp3 or displayed anergy hallmarks and, surprisingly, in the emergence of Foxp3 Treg cells. While these findings were at least as frequent as in the nontolerant repertoire. Despite suggested that the mechanism of tolerance is somehow dictated this apparent lack of deletional tolerance, repertoire inventories by the antigen expression pattern, it remains to be seen whether uncovered that some T cell receptors (TCRs) were lost from the this is a generally applicable rule (23). CD4 T cell pool, whereas others mediated T cell differentiation. INFLAMMATION reg TCR transgenics, global repertoire sequencing, and MHC IMMUNOLOGY AND The antigen responsiveness of these TCRs supported an affinity tetramers each entail distinct limitations. Monoclonal systems model of central tolerance. Importantly, the contribution of differ- with unphysiologically high frequencies of antigen-specific cells ent diverter TCRs to the nascent thymic Treg cell population may not faithfully recapitulate T cell fate decisions in polyclonal reflected their antigen reactivity rather than their frequency settings (24, 25). Large-scale repertoire analyses are limited in among precursors. This reveals a multilayered TCR hierarchy in their potential to relate cell fate to antigen specificity. MHC CD4 T cell tolerance that separates deleted and diverted TCRs tetramers may fail to reveal holes in the tolerant repertoire, as and assures that the Treg cell compartment is filled with cells of the loss of certain TCRs might be numerically compensated by maximal permissive antigen reactivity. expansion of cells carrying others TCRs. Moreover, although the + + emergence of Foxp3 cells among Tetramer (Tet) cells indi- T cell tolerance | clonal deletion | clonal diversion | regulatory T cell | cates that T cell induction occurs, it remains unclear whether MHC class II tetramer reg this selectively applies to cells bearing distinct TCRs. cell receptor (TCR) stimulation of thymocytes can result in Significance Ttheir deletion but can also specify the diversion of MHCII- + restricted T cells into the Foxp3 regulatory T (T ) cell lineage reg Central tolerance can generate holes in the CD4 T cell repertoire (1). The determinants that specify these alternative cell fates are + or divert cells into the Foxp3 T regulatory (T )celllineage. incompletely understood, and little is known about how clonal reg Little is known with regard to how these diametrically different deletion and clonal diversion shape the composition of poly- cell fate decisions of autoreactive cells shape the size and com- clonal cohorts of autoreactive cells of shared antigen specificity. position of polyclonal cohorts of antigen-specific T cells. Here we TCR/model antigen transgenic systems showed that Treg cell generated inventories of very rare autoreactive T cells in the differentiation, similar to clonal deletion, can be instructed by naive versus tolerant polyclonal repertoire and identified T cell TCR agonists (2, 3), and this was later confirmed for polyclonal receptors (TCRs) that were lost, whereas others mediated Treg T cells and natural self-antigens (4). In some models, low antigen cell differentiation. The antigen responsiveness of these TCRs levels favored Treg cell generation, whereas high antigen doses revealed a TCR hierarchy that not only separates deleted from favored deletion, suggesting that Treg cell differentiation occurs diverted TCRs but also generates a Treg cell compartment with within an avidity window between positive selection and deletion high antigen reactivity. (5–8). Other observations, however, are difficult to reconcile with a reductionist, purely signal strength-based model. For in- Author contributions: M.H. and L.K. designed research; T.H., E.U., S.T., C.F., and M.H. performed research; T.D., K.S., M.K.J., and D.H.B. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; stance, concomitant deletion is seen in essentially all TCR T.H., E.U., C.F., M.H., and L.K. analyzed data; and L.K. wrote the paper. transgenic models of neoantigen-driven Treg cell diversion (2, 3, The authors declare no conflict of interest. 7, 9), and it remains possible that Treg cell differentiation entails This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. stochastic/selective elements (10). This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- Global TCR repertoire analyses supported the idea that Treg NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND). differentiation is instructed by self-antigen recognition, although 1M.H. and L.K. contributed equally to this work. – some investigators came to opposing conclusions (11 13). Rep- 2To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: [email protected]. ertoire analyses also indicated that Aire-dependent expression of This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10. tissue-restricted antigens (TRAs) in thymic epithelial cells 1073/pnas.1907615116/-/DCSupplemental. (TECs), a phenomenon that had previously been associated with Published online August 26, 2019. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1907615116 PNAS | September 10, 2019 | vol. 116 | no. 37 | 18537–18543 Downloaded by guest on September 26, 2021 Here we addressed how clonal deletion and Treg induction However, it remained possible that clonal deletion also shaped impact not only the size but also the TCR composition of poly- the composition of PLP-specific cells, yet was numerically clonal CD4 T cells recognizing the natural CNS autoantigen masked, for instance, by compensatory expansion of other PLP myelin proteolipid protein (PLP). BL/6 mice are largely resistant reactive cells. Distinguishing these possibilities requires a com- + to PLP-induced experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis prehensive comparison of TCRs of Tet cells in Plp1KO versus (EAE), suggesting a robust state of antigen-specific tolerance. In Plp1WT mice. However, the sheer number of TCR α- and β-chain line with this, immunization of Plp1KO mice, to which PLP is a combinations that recognize a given antigen limits the feasibility foreign antigen, elicits a CD4 T cell response against 2 epitopes of such an approach in fully polyclonal repertoires. Several spanning amino acids 11 to 19 and 240 to 248, whereas Plp1WT hundred naive cells specific for a foreign antigen each expressed mice are functionally tolerant to these epitopes (26, 27). We a different TCR (29, 30). It is likely that the same applies to PLP- + assessed how far this unresponsiveness of the censored reper- specific CD4 T cells. Together with the paucity of Tet cells, this toire reflected the deletion, Treg cell diversion, or anergy of PLP- poses a significant hurdle to a conclusive comparison of antigen- specific CD4 T cells and whether these tolerance modes selec- specific TCRs in the absence or presence of a given autoantigen. tively applied to cells carrying distinct TCRs. To circumvent these inherent limitations of fully polyclonal TCR repertoires, we introduced a transgenic TCR β chain de- Results rived from a PLP11–19–specific TCR (27). The rationale was to PLP-specific CD4 T Cells Are Not Reduced in the Tolerant Repertoire reduce the repertoire complexity to the diversity of TCRα + but Contain Foxp3 Treg Cells. Using a combination of tetramer rearrangements and impose a bias toward higher numbers of staining and magnetic enrichment (SI Appendix, Fig. S1) (28), we PLP11–19–specific cells. The genotype of these compound trans- β TG Tcra+/− Foxp3GFP enumerated PLP11–19 (Tet-1) or PLP240–248 (Tet-3) specific CD4 genic mice (TCR -PLP1 :: :: ) will in the fol- T cells in pooled spleen and lymph node cells of Plp1KO and lowing be referred to as “Fixed-β.” Plp1WT mice. The uncensored peripheral repertoire of Plp1KO As expected, essentially all T cells in Fixed-β mice expressed + + mice contained 14.0 ± 3.0 Tet-1 CD4 T cells and