{"doi":"10.1101/2022.09.21.508912","title":"OCA-B/Pou2af1 is sufficient to promote CD4 <sup>+</sup> T cell memory and prospectively identifies memory precursors","abstract":"Abstract The molecular mechanisms leading to the establishment of immunological memory are inadequately understood, limiting the development of effective vaccines and durable anti-tumor immune therapies. Here we show that ectopic OCA-B expression is sufficient to improve antiviral memory recall responses, while having minimal effects on primary effector responses. At peak viral response short lived effector T cell populations are expanded but show increased Gadd45b and Socs2 expression, while memory precursor effector cells show increased expression of Bcl2 , Il7r and Tcf7 on a per-cell basis. Using an OCA-B mCherry reporter mouse line, we observe high OCA-B expression in CD4 + T CM cells. We show that early in viral infection, endogenously elevated OCA-B expression prospectively identifies memory precursor cells with increased survival capability and memory recall potential. Cumulatively, the results demonstrate that OCA-B is both necessary and sufficient to promote CD4 T cell memory in vivo and can be used to prospectively identify memory precursor cells. Significance CD4 + T cell memory is incompletely defined and memory progenitors difficult to identify. Here, we show that expression of the OCA-B transcription coactivator in CD4 + T cells is necessary and sufficient to drive productive memory. Using a novel mCherry reporter mouse line, we show that OCA-B expression enriches for responding effector cells with elevated memory potential. The results show that OCA-B expression in T cells is sufficient to promote CD4 + memory formation and marks memory precursor cells.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2022,"id":304431,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9571,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":577194,"name":"Erik P. Hughes","orcid":"0000-0001-8672-3928","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":482412,"name":"Heejoo Kim","orcid":"0000-0003-0358-2416","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":482413,"name":"Jelena Perovanović","orcid":"0000-0003-2348-2332","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":997291,"name":"Krystal R. Charley","orcid":"0000-0002-4065-1129","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":997292,"name":"Bryant Perkins","orcid":"0000-0001-7260-8814","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":997293,"name":"Junhong Du","orcid":"0000-0002-1362-1346","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":482415,"name":"Andrea Ibarra","orcid":"0000-0002-7346-2068","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":306386,"name":"Amber R. Syage","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":566307,"name":"J. Scott Hale","orcid":"0000-0003-4318-8472","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":52070,"name":"Matthew A. Williams","orcid":"0000-0002-4721-4482","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":15427,"name":"Dean Tantin","orcid":"0000-0003-1354-8385","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":824818,"name":"Wenxiang Sun","orcid":"0000-0001-9037-0942","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":46,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:32:32.651796Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}