Description
During immune ontogeny the thymus is colonized by distinct waves of hematopoietic stem cells that give rise to unique lineages of immune cells. In this report, we asked whether the developmental origin of CD8+ T cells influences their response to infection later in adulthood. To answer this question, we developed a system to 'timestamp' CD8+ T cells in situ at various stages of development (1d and 28d) and examined their behavior at 8 weeks of age. We found that neonatal-derived CD8+ T cells have an intrinsic propensity to become memory phenotype cells prior to infection and are the first cells to proliferate and become effectors after microbial challenge. These data indicate that there are developmental layers in the adult CD8+ T cell response to infection and that the heterogeneity in the effector pool is linked to the variation in the developmental origins of the responding cells. This dataset profiles gene expression in 1day- and 28day-timestamped naïve CD8+ T cells in 8 week old mice. Overall design: gene expression profiling of naïve CD8+ T cells in 8 week old mice, looking at two samples: cells made at 1 day or 28 days of life, in duplicate.