RNA-seq of human CD8low and CD8high cytotoxic T lymphocytes upon in vitro starvation

The mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling, which is an essential metabolic pathway that influences T cell differentiation, can be limited under conditions of metabolic stress e.g. during the cell starvation. As we observed reduced CD8 expression upon cell starvation in vitro, we sorted human cytotoxic T lymphocytes derived from six donors into low CD8 expression and high CD8 expressing T lymphocytes using flow cytometry. Their transcriptome was analyzed in order to investigate the two CD8 subsets. Our data suggests a functional diversity of CD8low and CD8high T cells with regard to cytotoxic effector function that might be useful to study these cells also in tumor sections or under conditions when cytotoxic T cells need to adapt to a changing microenvironment. Overall design: mRNA profiling of purified and FACS sorted human CD8low and CD8high cytotoxic T lymphocytes after 40h of in vitro starvation.