Open AccessMicrofluidics sorting enables the isolation of an intact cellular pair complex of CD8+ T cells and antigen-presenting cells in a cognate antigen recognition-dependent manner
Author(s) -
Soichiro Kuwabara,
Yuko Tanimoto,
Mie Okutani,
Jie Meng,
Yasunari Haseda,
Yumi KinugasaKatayama,
Taiki Aoshi
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0252666
Subject(s) - antigen , antigen presenting cell , microbiology and biotechnology , antigen presentation , biology , cytotoxic t cell , t cell , cd8 , cell sorting , immune system , immunology , flow cytometry , biochemistry , in vitro
Adaptive immune responses begin with cognate antigen presentation-dependent specific interaction between T cells and antigen-presenting cells. However, there have been limited reports on the isolation and analysis of these cellular complexes of T cell-antigen-presenting cell (T/APC). In this study, we successfully isolated intact antigen-specific cellular complexes of CD8 + T/APC by utilizing a microfluidics cell sorter. Using ovalbumin (OVA) model antigen and OT-I-derived OVA-specific CD8 + T cells, we analyzed the formation of antigen-specific and antigen-non-specific T/APC cellular complexes and revealed that the antigen-specific T/APC cellular complex was highly stable than the non-specific one, and that the intact antigen-specific T/APC complex can be retrieved as well as enriched using a microfluidics sorter, but not a conventional cell sorter. The single T/APC cellular complex obtained can be further analyzed for the sequences of T cell receptor Vα and Vβ genes as well as cognate antigen information simultaneously. These results suggested that this approach can be applied for other antigen and CD8 + T cells of mice and possibly those of humans. We believe that this microfluidics sorting method of the T/APC complex will provide useful information for future T cell immunology research.