{"doi":"10.7554/elife.82626","title":"Targeted multi-omic analysis of human skin tissue identifies alterations of conventional and unconventional T cells associated with burn injury","abstract":"Burn injuries are a leading cause of unintentional injury, associated with a dysfunctional immune response and an increased risk of infections. Despite this, little is known about the role of T cells in human burn injury. In this study, we compared the activation and function of conventional T cells and unconventional T cell subsets in skin tissue from acute burn (within 7 days from initial injury), late phase burn (beyond 7 days from initial injury), and non-burn patients. We compared T cell functionality by a combination of flow cytometry and a multi-omic single-cell approach with targeted transcriptomics and protein expression. We found a significantly lower proportion of CD8+ T cells in burn skin compared to non-burn skin, with CD4+ T cells making up the bulk of the T cell population. Both conventional and unconventional burn tissue T cells show significantly higher IFN-γ and TNF-α levels after stimulation than non-burn skin T cells. In sorted T cells, clustering showed that burn tissue had significantly higher expression of homing receptors CCR7, S1PR1, and SELL compared to non-burn skin. In unconventional T cells, including mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) and γδ T cells, we see significantly higher expression of cytotoxic molecules GZMB, PRF1, and GZMK. Multi-omics analysis of conventional T cells suggests a shift from tissue-resident T cells in non-burn tissue to a circulating T cell phenotype in burn tissue. In conclusion, by examining skin tissue from burn patients, our results suggest that T cells in burn tissue have a pro-inflammatory rather than a homeostatic tissue-resident phenotype, and that unconventional T cells have a higher cytotoxic capacity. Our findings have the potential to inform the development of novel treatment strategies for burns.","journal":"eLife","year":2023,"id":369274,"datarank":0.4630347425536722,"base_score":2.302585092994046,"endowment":2.302585092994046,"self_citation_contribution":0.3453877639491069,"citation_network_contribution":0.11764697860456529,"self_endowment_contribution":0.3453877639491069,"citer_contribution":0.11764697860456529,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":9,"citer_count":9,"citers_with_citation_signal":7,"citers_with_endowment":7,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9584,"is_data_producer":true,"deposit_databanks":{"SRA":["SRR23092707","SRR23092708"]},"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":781628,"name":"Giavonni Lewis","orcid":"0000-0001-6324-684X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":263525,"name":"Irma D Fleming","orcid":"0000-0003-3294-4770","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":846349,"name":"Callie M Thompson","orcid":"0000-0002-1529-5687","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1007351,"name":"Yan Zhai","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":404907,"name":"Matthew A. Firpo","orcid":"0000-0002-7983-3982","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":352714,"name":"Daniel T. Leung","orcid":"0000-0001-8401-0801","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":566303,"name":"Daniel Labuz","orcid":"0000-0003-3769-3544","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":62,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:15:28.704894Z","pmid":"36790939","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":[]}