Innate Inflammatory Signals Induced by Various Pathogens Differentially Dictate the IFN-I Dependence of CD8 T Cells for Clonal Expansion and Memory Formation

Type-I IFNs (IFN-I) provide direct survival signals to T cells during Ag-driven proliferation. Because IFN-I production differs depending on the pathogen, we assessed CD8 T cell requirement for direct IFN-I signals during responses to vaccinia virus (VV), vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), and Listeria monocytogenes (LM) immunizations in vivo. IFN-I-receptor-deficient (IFN-IR°) CD8 T cells expanded 3- to 5-fold less and formed a diminished memory pool compared with wild-type (WT) CD8 T cells in response to VV, VSV, or LM. WT CD8 T cells expanded more robustly in response to LCMV-encoded Ags than to Ags encoded by the other three pathogens, and under these conditions the lack of direct IFN-I signals inhibited their expansion by ∼100-fold. To test whether the high antigenic-load provided by LCMV caused greater expansion and greater IFN-I dependency, we primed WT and IFN-IR° OVA-specific OT-1 CD8 T cells with a fixed-number of OVA-peptide-pulsed dendritic cells along with adjuvant effect provided by LCMV, VV, VSV, or LM. Both WT and IFN-IR° OT-1 cells were recruited, proliferated, and differentiated into effectors in all the four cases. However, WT OT-1 cells expanded similarly in all four cases. IFN-IR° OT-1 cells expanded ∼20-fold less than the WT OT-1 CD8 T cells when LCMV was used as adjuvant, whereas their expansion was affected only marginally when VV, VSV, or LM were used as adjuvants. Thus, innate/inflammatory signals induced by different pathogens contribute to CD8 T cell expansion and memory formation via distinct levels of IFN-I dependence.