Innate T cells share common lineage differentiation program

Abstract

iNKT, MAIT and γδ T cells are innate T cells, which develop in the thymus as memory cells. These cells share common features such as tissue residency, response to innate cytokines and participation in early effector function upon pathogenic invasion. In this report, by using flow and mass cytometry analyses, we showed that three different types of innate T cells have developmentally determined effector subsets secreting IFNγ, IL4 and IL17 cytokines, which express lineage specific transcription factors such as TBET, GATA3 and RORγt respectively. Bulk and single cell RNAseq together with TCR repertoire analysis revealed each effector subset of NKT, MAIT and γδ T cells are highly homologous and their genetic signatures are clustered according to their functional property rather than their antigen specificity. Altogether, our work characterizes shared ontogeny of innate T cells at the single cell level.