Webinar: Early Life Development of Thymic Microbiota-Specific T Cells

Gut microbiota is known to educate the immune system, balancing effector and regulatory T cells responses, but it remains unknown how bacteria-specific T cells develop. In this webinar, Dr. Daniel Zegarra-Ruiz of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, recipient of the AAI 2020 Lefrançois-BioLegend Memorial Award, discusses how thymic T cell development is altered after colonization with model intestinal microbes. These findings include thymic expansion of bacteria-specific naive T cells, discovery of bacterial DNA in the thymus, enrichment of CX3CR1+ dendritic cells (CX3+ DCs), and the effect of depleting the gut microbiota with antibiotics. Thymic microbiota-specific T cells were found to differentiate into intestinal effector T cells, offering protection or mediating pathology. Together, Dr. Zegarra-Ruiz’s data suggests that trafficking of bacteria to the thymus by intestinal DCs drives T cell expansion of microbiota-specific T cells, shaping peripheral immunity against pathogens and the microbiota itself.
What you will learn:
• How to identify and characterize microbiota-specific T cells in the thymus
• How gut microbial depletion affects thymic populations
• How to study antigen-presenting cells traffic from the gut to the thymus
• How to assess thymic microbiota-specific T cells expansion and differentiation