Summary
T lymphocytes regulate nutrient uptake to meet the metabolic demands of immune activation. The present study shows that the intracellular supply of large neutral amino acids (LNAAs) in T cells is regulated by pathogen and the T cell antigen receptor (TCR). A single System L transporter, Slc7a5, mediated LNAA uptake in activated T cells. Slc7a5-null T cells could not metabolically reprogram in response to antigen and failed clonal expansion and effector differentiation. The metabolic catastrophe caused by Slc7a5 loss reflects the requirement for sustained uptake of the LNAA leucine for activation of mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) and for expression of c-myc. Pathogen control of System L transporters is thus a critical metabolic checkpoint for T cells.
External signals that control the activity of proteins encoded by the ras proto-oncogenes have not previously been characterized. It is now shown that stimulation of the antigen receptor of T lymphocytes causes a rapid activation of p21ras. The mechanism seems to involve a decrease in the activity of GAP, the GTPase-activating protein, on stimulation of protein kinase C. In lymphocytes, p21ras may therefore be an important mediator of the action of protein kinase C.
A PI3K- and Akt-independent pathway mediated by mTORC1 regulates expression of HIF1 in CD8+ T cells and is required to sustain glucose metabolism and regulate cell trafficking.
The discovery of interleukin-2 (IL-2) changed the molecular understanding of how the immune system is controlled. IL-2 is a pleiotropic cytokine, and dissecting the signaling pathways that allow IL-2 to control the differentiation and homeostasis of both pro- and anti-inflammatory T cells is fundamental to determining the molecular details of immune regulation. The IL-2 receptor couples to JAK tyrosine kinases and activates the STAT5 transcription factors. However, IL-2 does much more than control transcriptional programs; it is a key regulator of T cell metabolic programs. The development of global phosphoproteomic approaches has expanded the understanding of IL-2 signaling further, revealing the diversity of phosphoproteins that may be influenced by IL-2 in T cells. However, it is increasingly clear that within each T cell subset, IL-2 will signal within a framework of other signal transduction networks that together will shape the transcriptional and metabolic programs that determine T cell fate.
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