A recent "Cell Reports" paper by the Oxenius group (IMB) demonstrates a role of targeted centrosome inheritance during CD8+ T cell division for the generation of memory precursor cells.
CD8+ T cells are a crucial component of adaptive immune responses and are particularly important for the control of intracellular pathogens such as viruses as well as anti-tumor responses. Upon initial activation by their cognate antigen, naïve CD8+ T cells start to proliferate and differentiate into short-lived effector and long-lived memory precursor cells.
How a single, naïve T cell can give rise to diverse progenies of effector and memory cells is not completely understood. One way to achieve this is by asymmetric cell division (ACD), characterized by an unequal distribution of cellular cargo, resulting in divergent daughter cells already after the first division - one being more destined to an effector and the other one more to a memory fate. We hypothesized that centrosomes might as well be subject to specific partitioning into one or the other daughter cell upon stimulation of a naïve T cell. To test this, two different centrosome labelling approaches were established to follow mother and daughter centrosome inheritance during the first cell division after activation. We discovered that the mother centrosome is preferentially inherited by the more effector-like daughter cell in more than 90% of all first CD8+ T cell divisions. Experimental randomization of mother centrosome inheritage resulted in a higher frequency of effector-like progenies at the expense of memory-like cells.
These findings suggest that directed centrosome inheritance upon ACD has functional effects on fate diversification of CD8+ T cells.
Link to the paper in external page "Cell Reports" .
