Abstract
To better understand the evolution of a systemic memory response to a mucosal pathogen, we monitored antigen-specific OT1 CD8 T-cell responses to a fusion of the SspH2 protein and the peptide SIINFEKL stably expressed from the chromosome of Salmonella enterica and loaded into the class I pathway of antigen presentation of professional phagocytes through the Salmonella pathogenicity island 2 type III secretion system (TTSS). This strategy has revealed that effector memory CD8 T cells with low levels of CD62L expression (CD62L(low)) are maintained in systemic sites months after vaccination in response to low-grade infections with Salmonella. However, the CD8 T-cell pool eventually declines. Low numbers of central memory cells surviving after prolonged resting from an antigen encounter can nevertheless reconstitute the systemic effector memory pool in a route-specific recall response to cognate antigens encountered in the gut. Accordingly, populations of CD62L(high) interleukin-7 receptor-positive progenitor central memory cells grafted into naïve mice expand in response to orally administered Salmonella expressing the chromosomal translational fusion of sspH2 and the sequence encoding the SIINFEKL peptide but fail to proliferate following systemic stimulation. Moreover, populations of systemic memory CD8 T cells restricted to Salmonella in oral vaccines selectively expand in response to cognate antigens presented by cells isolated from mesenteric lymph nodes (MLN). Together, these findings have revealed the imprinting of systemic CD8 central memory T-cell recall responses against enteropathogens by MLN. MLN restriction represents a novel mechanism by which systemic CD8 T-cell immunity is confined to periods of high risk for extraintestinal dissemination.