JHMV-specific Treg memory

Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are critical for regulating immunopathogenic responses in a variety of infections, including infection of mice with JHMV, a neurotropic coronavirus that causes immune-mediated demyelinating disease. While virus-specific Tregs are known to mitigate disease in this infection by suppressing pathogenic effector T cell responses of the same specificity, it is unclear if these virus-specific Tregs form memory populations and persist similar to their conventional T cell counterparts of the same epitope specificity. Using congenically labeled JHMV-specific Tregs, we found that virus-specific Tregs persist long-term after infection, through at least 180 days post-infection. We additionally demonstrate that these cells are better able to proliferate after infection than naïve Tregs of the same specificity, further suggesting that these cells differentiate into memory Tregs upon encountering cognate antigen. Together, these data suggest that virus-specific Tregs are able to persist long-term in the absence of viral antigen as memory Tregs. We used RNA-seq to analyze FACS-sorted virus-specific Tregs from naïve mice and 60 day post-JHMV infection mice, n=4 mice per group