Lyu, M. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2020

Dissecting the landscape of activated CMV-stimulated CD4+ T cells in human by linking single-cell RNA-seq with T-cell receptor sequencing

CD4 T cell is crucial in CMV infection, but its role is still unclear during this process. Here, we present a single-cell RNA-seq together with T cell receptor (TCR) sequencing to screen the heterogenicity and potential function of CMV pp65 reactivated CD4+ T cell subsets from human peripheral blood, and unveil their potential interactions. Notably, Treg composed the major part of these reactivated cells. Treg gene expression data revealed multiple transcripts of both inflammatory and inhibitory functions. Additionally, we describe the detailed phenotypes of CMV-reactivated effector-memory (Tem), cytotoxic T (CTL), and naive T cells at the single-cell resolution, and implied the direct derivation of CTL from naive CD4+ T cells. By analyzing the TCR repertoire, we identified a clonality in stimulated Tem and CTLs, and a tight relationship of Tem and CTL showing a large share in TCR. This study provides clues for understanding the function of CD4+ T cells subsets and unveils their interaction in CMV infection, and may promote the development of CMV immunotherapy.

immunology↗

bioRxiv2020

Scale-invariance in brain activity predicts practice effects in cognitive performance

Although practicing a task generally benefits later performance on that same task, there are individual differences in practice effects. One avenue to model such differences comes from research showing that brain networks extract functional advantages from operating in the vicinity of criticality, a state in which brain network activity is more scale-free. We hypothesized that higher scale-free signal from fMRI data, measured with the Hurst exponent (H), indicates closer proximity to critical states. We tested whether individuals with higher H during repeated task performance would show greater practice effects. In Study 1, participants performed a dual-n-back task (DNB) twice during MRI (n = 56). In Study 2, we used two runs of n-back task (NBK) data from the Human Connectome Project sample (n = 599). In Study 3, participants performed a word completion task (CAST) across 6 runs (n = 44). In all three studies, multivariate analysis was used to test whether higher H was related to greater practice-related performance improvement. Supporting our hypothesis, we found patterns of higher H that reliably correlated with greater performance improvement across participants in all three studies. However, the predictive brain regions were distinct, suggesting that the specific spatial H{uparrow} patterns are not task-general.

neuroscience↗