Human intestinal T cell and paired blood transcriptomes

The intestinal mucosa harbors the largest accumulation of T lymphocytes in the body. While these T cells play an important role in immune homeostasis, they are also implicated in triggering and maintaining pathological intestinal inflammation. In humans they are poorly characterised, and even mouse transcriptomes have been reported for only a few individual cell types, many of which lack direct human equivalents. Using expression microarrays on T cells isolated from ileal biopsies and in silico analysis, we present here an unbiased, transcriptome-wide view of function in T cell subpopulations of the healthy human intestine and delineate signalling pathways that are distinct from those seen in peripheral blood T cells. Paired blood and intestinal biopsies from 6 age/sex matched healthy human subjects. Intestinal biopsies processed to release intraepithelial lymphocytes (IEL) and lamina propria lymphocytes (LPL). All samples then used to generate T effector memory (Tem) cells of CD4+ and CD8+ subsets by flow sorting. 6 individuals; 3 cell sources per individual (blood, LPL, IEL); 2 Tem subsets per cell source (CD4+ and CD8+). 36 arrays in total