Live attenuated vaccines are generally highly efficacious and often superior to inactivated vaccines, yet the underlying mechanisms of this remain largely unclear. Here we identify recognition of microbial viability as a potent stimulus for follicular helper T cell (T cell) differentiation and vaccine responses. Antigen-presenting cells (APCs) distinguished viable bacteria from dead bacteria through Toll-like receptor 8 (TLR8)-dependent detection of bacterial RNA. In contrast to dead bacteria and other TLR ligands, live bacteria, bacterial RNA and synthetic TLR8 agonists induced a specific cytokine profile in human and porcine APCs, thereby promoting T cell differentiation. In domestic pigs, immunization with a live bacterial vaccine induced robust T cell and antibody responses, but immunization with its heat-killed counterpart did not. Finally, a hypermorphic TLR8 polymorphism was associated with protective immunity elicited by vaccination with bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) in a human cohort. We have thus identified TLR8 as an important driver of T cell differentiation and a promising target for T cell-skewing vaccine adjuvants.
RNA has been proposed as an important scaffolding factor in the nucleus, aiding protein complex assembly in the dense intracellular milieu. Architectural contributions of RNA to cytosolic signaling pathways, however, remain largely unknown. Here, we devised a multidimensional gradient approach, which systematically locates RNA components within cellular protein networks. Among a subset of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) cosedimenting with the ubiquitin–proteasome system, our approach unveiled ncRNA MaIL1 as a critical structural component of the Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) immune signal transduction pathway. RNA affinity antisense purification–mass spectrometry (RAP-MS) revealed MaIL1 binding to optineurin (OPTN), a ubiquitin-adapter platforming TBK1 kinase. MaIL1 binding stabilized OPTN, and consequently, loss of MaIL1 blunted OPTN aggregation, TBK1-dependent IRF3 phosphorylation, and type I interferon (IFN) gene transcription downstream of TLR4. MaIL1 expression was elevated in patients with active pulmonary infection and was highly correlated with IFN levels in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. Our study uncovers MaIL1 as an integral RNA component of the TLR4–TRIF pathway and predicts further RNAs to be required for assembly and progression of cytosolic signaling networks in mammalian cells.
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