Fig. 3: CD4⁺ T cell-intrinsic, clock-controlled rhythms in the adaptive immune response.

a Time course of CD4⁺ T cells in popliteal lymph nodes (LNs) following subcutaneous injection of 1 × 10⁶ bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (BMDCs); n = 5 mice, two-way ANOVA with Sidak’s post test. b Quantification of Ki67⁺ CD4 T cells in popliteal LNs following subcutaneous injection of 1 × 10⁶ BMDCs; n = 5 mice, two-way ANOVA with Sidak’s post test. c Proliferation capacity of LN CD4⁺ T cells stimulated ex vivo, normalized to the ZT7 average; n = 3–6 mice, cosinor analysis (F-test with 95% confidence interval; 15 degrees of freedom; R² effect sizes from left to right 0.5949, 0.5261, 0.4918). d Volcano plot of protein enrichment in LN CD4⁺ T cells from WT (left) and T cell-specific Bmal1^−/− (right, (BMAL1^ΔTcell)) mice in steady state at ZT1 vs. ZT13; n = 3–4 mice, unpaired two-sided Student’s t-test, ZT1 vs. ZT13 at a FDR = 0.05 and S0 = 1 that are part of the GOBP terms immune response (red) or ketone/amine/lipid metabolism (black) are shown. e Principal component analysis of log₂ transformed LFQ intensities at a FDR = 0.05 cut-off. f GOBP 1D annotation categories and enrichment scores of the unpaired two-sided Student’s t-test differences ZT1 vs. ZT13 at a FDR = 0.01 cut-off. g, h Heatmap of log₂ transformed LFQ intensities filtered for significance in a Student’s t-test ZT1 vs. ZT13 and part of the GOBP terms immune response (g) or ketone/amine/lipid metabolism (h). Data are plotted as mean ± standard error of mean (SEM) ns, not significant. Source data are provided as a Source data file and detailed sample sizes are available in “Methods”.