Recent thymic emigrants preferentially undergo memory inflation after persistent infection.

ABSTRACT: Cytomegalovirus (CMV) leads to a unique phenomenon known as 'memory inflation,' where antigen-specific memory CD8 + T cells continue to accumulate in the peripheral tissues during the latent stage of infection. However, it is still not clear how the inflating pool of memory CD8 + T cells is generated and maintained. In this study, we used murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) as a model of persistent infection and fate-mapping mice to determine the dynamics of CD8 + T cell recruitment into the memory pool. We found that neonatal exposure to CMV leads to an expansion of newly produced CD8 + T cells called recent thymic emigrants, or RTEs, which are maintained in the long-lived memory compartment. In contrast, CD8 + T cells produced after the acute phase of infection contribute minimally to memory i

SUBMITTER: Hilt ZT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12316393 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature