A new subpopulation of intestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes expressing high level of T cell receptor γδ

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Abstract
The murine intestinal epithelium contains T cell receptor (TcR) γδ-bearing T cells in high frequency. In the present report, we showed that TcR γδ-bearing intestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes (IEL) from C3H/He (H-2k) mice can be divided into two subpopulations based on TcR expression level; a subpopulation with a remarkably high level of TcR expression and a subpopulation with a moderate level of TcR expression, designated as TcR γδhi IEL and TcR γδmod IEL, respectively. In flow cytometric analysis, the TcR γδhi IEL expressed a high level of TcR (mean fluorescence channel 518) when compared with the TcR level of TcR γδ+ T cells in other lymphoid organs (mean fluorescence channel 88). The TcR γδhi IEL were detected in IEL from mice of H-2k and H-2k/b haplotypes but not in H-2b and H-2d haplotypes. Vδ4, which was reported to be frequently expressed in IEL of H-2k mice, was preferentially expressed by TcR γδhi IEL. These results suggested that the existence of the TcR γδhi population is related to the high frequency of Vδ4 in H-2k mice.