Mature T cells are selected for recognizing self-antigens with low to intermediate affinity in the thymus. Recently, the relative differences in self-reactivity among individual T-cell clones were appreciated as important factors regulating their fate and immune response, but the role of self-reactivity in T-cell biology is incompletely understood. We addressed the role of self-reactivity in T-cell diversity by generating an atlas of mouse peripheral CD8+ T cells, which revealed two unconventional populations of antigen-inexperienced T cells. In the next step, we examined the steady-state phenotype of monoclonal T cells with various levels of self-reactivity. Highly self-reactive clones preferentially differentiate into antigen-inexperienced memory-like cells, but do not form a population expressing type I interferon-induced genes, showing that these two subsets have unrelated origins. The functional comparison of naïve monoclonal CD8+ T cells specific to the identical model antigen did not show any correlation between the level of self-reactivity and the magnitude of the immune response.

Czech Centre for Phenogenomics Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences Vestec Czechia

Faculty of Science Department of Cell Biology Charles University Prague Czechia

Institute for Medical Microbiology Immunology and Hygiene Technical University of Munich Munich Germany

Laboratory of Adaptive Immunity Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences Prague Czechia

Laboratory of Gnotobiology Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences Novy Hradek Czechia

Laboratory of Immunity and Cell Communication BIOCEV 1st Faculty of Medicine Charles University Vestec Czechia

Mikrobiologisches Institut Klinische Mikrobiologie Immunologie und Hygiene Universitätsklinikum Erlangen Friedrich Alexander Universität Erlangen Nürnberg Erlangen Germany

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