Quantitative and Qualitative Perturbations of CD8+ MAITs in Healthy <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i>–Infected Individuals

Abstract CD8 T cells are considered important contributors to the immune response against Mycobacterium tuberculosis, yet limited information is currently known regarding their specific immune signature and phenotype. In this study, we applied a cell population transcriptomics strategy to define immune signatures of human latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) in memory CD8 T cells. We found a 41-gene signature that discriminates between memory CD8 T cells from healthy LTBI subjects and uninfected controls. The gene signature was dominated by genes associated with mucosal-associated invariant T cells (MAITs) and reflected the lower frequency of MAITs observed in individuals with LTBI. There was no evidence for a conventional CD8 T cell–specific signature between the two cohorts. We, therefore, investigated MAITs in more detail based on Vα7.2 and CD161 expression and staining with an MHC-related protein 1 (MR1) tetramer. This revealed two distinct populations of CD8+Vα7.2+CD161+ MAITs: MR1 tetramer+ and MR1 tetramer−, which both had distinct gene expression compared with memory CD8 T cells. Transcriptomic analysis of LTBI versus noninfected individuals did not reveal significant differences for MR1 tetramer+ MAITs. However, gene expression of MR1 tetramer− MAITs showed large interindividual diversity and a tuberculosis-specific signature. This was further strengthened by a more diverse TCR-α and -β repertoire of MR1 tetramer− cells as compared with MR1 tetramer+. Thus, circulating memory CD8 T cells in subjects with latent tuberculosis have a reduced number of conventional MR1 tetramer+ MAITs as well as a difference in phenotype in the rare population of MR1 tetramer− MAITs compared with uninfected controls.