{"doi":"10.4049/immunohorizons.2300081","title":"Larval T Cells Are Functionally Distinct from Adult T Cells in <i>Xenopus laevis</i>","abstract":"The amphibian Xenopus laevis tadpole provides a unique comparative experimental organism for investigating the roles of innate-like T (iT) cells in tolerogenic immunity during early development. Unlike mammals and adult frogs, where conventional T cells are dominant, tadpoles rely mostly on several prominent distinct subsets of iT cells interacting with cognate nonpolymorphic MHC class I-like molecules. In the present study, to investigate whole T cell responsiveness ontogenesis in X. laevis, we determined in tadpoles and adult frogs the capacity of splenic T cells to proliferate in vivo upon infection with two different pathogens, ranavirus FV3 and Mycobacterium marinum, as well as in vitro upon PHA stimulation using the thymidine analogous 5-ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine and flow cytometry. We also analyzed by RT-quantitative PCR T cell responsiveness upon PHA stimulation. In vivo tadpole splenic T cells showed limited capacity to proliferate, whereas the in vitro proliferation rate was higher than adult T cells. Gene markers for T cell activation and immediate-early genes induced upon TCR activation were upregulated with similar kinetics in tadpole and adult splenocytes. However, the tadpole T cell signature included a lower amplitude in the TCR signaling, which is a hallmark of mammalian memory-like T cells and iT or \"preset\" T cells. This study suggests that reminiscent of mammalian neonatal T cells, tadpole T cells are functionally different from their adult counterpart.","journal":"ImmunoHorizons","year":2023,"id":382625,"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":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9522,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":491532,"name":"Connor C. McGuire","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1037258,"name":"Vania Lopez Ruiz","orcid":"0000-0002-3207-2960","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":765270,"name":"Francisco De Jesús Andino","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":241965,"name":"Jacques Robert","orcid":"0000-0003-4380-1476","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":950374,"name":"Matthieu Paiola","orcid":"0000-0002-3536-861X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":78,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:17:20.969491Z","pmid":"37870488","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":[]}