Histone methyltransferase and histone methylation in inflammatory T-cell responses.

During immune responses, T cells require tightly controlled expression of transcriptional programs to regulate the balance between beneficial and harmful immunity. These transcriptional programs are critical for the lineage specification of effector T cells, the production of effector cytokines and molecules, and the development and maintenance of memory T cells. An emerging theme is that post-translational modification of histones by methylation plays an important role in orchestrating the expression of transcriptional programs in T cells.

Critical role of host gammadelta T cells in experimental acute graft-versus-host disease.

Gammadelta T cells localize to target tissues of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and therefore we investigated the role of host gammadelta T cells in the pathogenesis of acute GVHD in several well-characterized allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) models. Depletion of host gammadelta T cells in wild-type (wt) B6 recipients by administration of anti-T-cell receptor (TCR) gammadelta monoclonal antibody reduced GVHD, and gammadelta T-cell-deficient (gammadelta-/-) BM transplant recipients experienced markedly improved survival compared with normal controls (63% vs 10%, P < .001).