OCA-B/Pou2af1 is sufficient to promote CD4+ T cell memory and prospectively identifies memory precursors [single cell RNA-Seq]

Sun et al. use T cell conditional knockout and ectopic expression to show that OCA-B is required for, and sufficient to promote, CD4+ memory T cell formation in vivo, and can be used to prospectively identify effector T cells with enhanced memory potential. Overall design: CD4+ T cells were purified from female Ly5.1 SMARTA and Ly5.1/5.2 SMARTA mice, and separately transduced with pMIG-OCA-B or empty vector (EV), respectively. On the following day, transduced GFP+ cells were sorted, 20K of each combined 1:1, and injected intravenously into C57BL/6J recipients mice. 24h later, each recipient mouse was injected intraperitoneally with 2x105 pfu LCMVArm. After eight days,CD4+GFP+Ly5.1+Ly5.2+ (EV) and GFP+Ly5.1+ (OCA-B-expressing) cells were sorted and used for RNA purification. Then RNA samples are applied for bulk RNAseq.