UC Davis

Immune diversification helps protect the host against a myriad of pathogens. CD8+ T cells are essential adaptive immune cells that inhibit the spread of pathogens by inducing apoptosis in infected host cells, ultimately ensuring complete elimination of infectious pathogens and suppressing disease development. Accordingly, numerous studies have been conducted to elucidate the mechanisms underlying CD8+ T cell activation, proliferation, and differentiation into effector and memory cells, and to identify various intrinsic and extrinsic factors regulating these processes. The current knowledge accumulated through these studies has led to a huge breakthrough in understanding the existence of heterogeneity in CD8+ T cell populations during immune response and the principles underlying this heterogeneity. As the heterogeneity in effector/memory phases has been extensively reviewed elsewhere, in the current review, we focus on CD8+ T cells in a naïve state, introducing recent studies dealing with the heterogeneity of naive CD8+ T cells and discussing the factors that contribute to such heterogeneity. We also discuss how this heterogeneity contributes to establishing the immense complexity of antigen-specific CD8+ T cell response.