Fig. 5: OMM¹² favors cytotoxic and proliferative Th1 cell clusters at the expense of Tfh cells.

SPF (gray, square), OMM¹² (blue, triangle) and GF (pink, circle) mice received 5.000 SMARTA cells 5 days prior infection with LCMV Cl-13 and were analyzed at 8 dpi. Small intestine lamina propria and spleen live⁺ CD4⁺ CD45.1⁺ cells were re-isolated at 8 dpi and subjected to RNAseq analysis. Expression of (A) Bcl6 and Cxcr5 on each individual cell for each sample group and organ represented over the reduced space of Violin plots. Representative (B) FACS plots and (C) frequencies of adoptively transferred Tfh SMARTA cells in spleen of SPF, OMM¹² and GF mice. P values are as followed: for adoptively transferred Tfh SMARTA in the spleen (SPF vs OMM¹² = 0.0043). Expression of (D) Plac8, (E) Ccr9, (F) Ly6c2 and Tbx21 and (G) GzmB on each individual cell for each sample group represented over the reduced space of UMAP. H Representative flow cytometry plots and I) frequencies of GzmB secretion of adoptively transferred SMARTA cells after restimulation with the virus-specific gp61 peptide. P values are for GzmB secretion of SMARTA in spleen (SPF vs OMM¹² = 0.0015 and OMM¹² vs GF = 0.0005). Each dot represents an individual mouse and mean ± SD from two independent experiments is shown. Data from two independent experiments with SPF n = 10, OMM¹² n = 8, GF n = 3 mice (C) or SPF n = 5, OMM¹² n = 5, GF n = 5 mice (I) are shown. Statistical analysis for (B, C, E, G and H) was performed using one-way ANOVA with Tukey correction for multiple comparison. P value of < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.