Deciphering human T cell states and receptors with a single cell pan-infection atlas

11:40 - 12:10

Day 1 – February 5, 2025

Abstract

The adaptive immune system relies heavily on T cells, which play a critical role in defending against infectious diseases. Despite decades of progress using mouse models to study antigen-specific T cell responses, a comprehensive characterization of T cell states and receptors in human infectious diseases has remained elusive. To fill this knowledge gap, we have generated a large-scale, integrated RNA-sequencing atlas of over 2 million single T cells from hundreds of donors across multiple tissues, collected in the context of viral, bacterial and parasitic infections. We finely map the T cell states using transcriptomic and cell surface protein (CITE-seq) measurements and develop a pipeline towards predicting TCR-peptide-HLA specificities. Using flow sorting by oligo-barcoded tetramers against viral epitopes as well as data analysis, we validate our findings. Taken together, our curated multi-omic atlas offers novel insights into T cell-mediated immunity across a broad spectrum of infectious diseases, advancing our understanding of human immune responses.

The speakers