Zfp362 potentiates inflammatory T cell responses independent of Th17 cell differentiation

Th17 cells play an important role for mucosal barrier integrity and pathogen clearance, but also have been implicated in inflammatory and autoimmune disorders. Recently, we had described the DNA methylation profile of Th17 cells, and identified Zinc finger protein (Zfp)362 among the genes being uniquely demethylated in Th17 cells (Yang et al., DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkv014 ). Here, we prepared nuclei from CD4+ T cells deficient in Zfp362 (CD4creZfp362flox/flox mice) or CD4+ T cells capable to express Zfp362 (Zfp362flox/flox mice), subjected them to single-nucleus RNA-sequencing (snRNA-seq) and analyzed the influence of Zfp362 on the transcriptome. Overall design: Cells from colon and small intestine were prepared from the tissue of seven Zfp362flox/flox mice or CD4creZfp362flox/flox mice and CD8a-CD11c-CD45R-F4/80-CD4+CD44+CD62L- effector T cells isolated by Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). Nuclei from sorted cells were subjected to a droplet-based library preparation technique (10x Genomics). The resulting libraries were sequenced on a Novaseq 6000 (Illumina).