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Lymphocyte responses

Hunker down with HOBIT and BLIMP1

Nature Reviews Immunology volume 16, pages 338–339 (2016)Cite this article

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Subpopulations of lymphocytes reside permanently at sites of pathogen entry, where they provide immediate protection against reinfection. But, until now, it was not clear how tissue residency was established and maintained. A recent study in Science describes the transcription factors HOBIT (homologue of BLIMP1 in T cells; also known as ZFP683) and BLIMP1 (B lymphocyte-induced maturation protein 1; also known as PRDM1) as universal regulators of tissue residency in lymphocytes.

Certain subsets of natural killer (NK) cells and NKT cells also reside in tissues. Consistent with a role in tissue residency, liver-resident NK cells but not conventional NK cells were found to express HOBIT. In addition, mice deficient in both BLIMP1 and HOBIT had significantly reduced numbers of NKT cells in the liver but not the spleen.

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References

  1. Mackay, L. K. et al. Hobit and Blimp1 instruct a universal transcriptional program of tissue residency in lymphocytes. Science 352, 459–463 (2016)

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  1. Lucy Bird
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Mueller, S. N. & Mackay, L. K. Tissue-resident memory T cells: local specialists in immune defence. Nat. Rev. Immunol. 16, 79–89 (2016)

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Bird, L. Hunker down with HOBIT and BLIMP1. Nat Rev Immunol 16, 338–339 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nri.2016.61

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