Did you know that most of the T cells in your blood are Stripy? Stripy T cells (abbreviated as TØ) are small round T cells with a deep nuclear invagination that spatially concentrates the ER, Golgi, mitochondria, and an intracellular pool of T cell receptors. Now, in our latest paper just out in Science, Ben and the team, in collaboration with the wonderful labs from Annette Oxenius and the Blutspende Zurich, show that the way a T cell looks (their “architecture”) matters greatly for its function!
Because of their spatial organization, stripy T cells are fast responders and predominantly turn into effector cells, while conventional looking T cells (abbreviated as TO; i.e. those T cells without nuclear invaginations and therefore without cytoplasmic content bundling) respond slower, more muted, and predominantly give rise to memory precursor cells. Read all about it in Science!
Also check out the ETH News article, the Tweetorial by the lab, and the many amazing videos embedded in the publication, including this one!
This discovery was an unexpected offshoot from our multiplexed immune cell imaging by Yannik previously published in Science Advances and Nature, all funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation ❤️.