Immunobiology

The decision between scrambled eggs or an apple for breakfast probably won’t make or break your day, but for your cells, a similar decision could determine their entire identity. Professor Susan Kaech, postdoctoral researcher Shixin Ma, and colleagues revealed new insights into the complicated relationship between nutrition and cell identity. They found that the state of the immune system’s T cells could be determined by which nutrient the cell was metabolizing. Switching from acetate to citrate could shift the cells from an active, disease-fighting “effector” state to an “exhausted” one. The findings reveal how different nutrients can change a cell’s gene expression, function, and identity. They also suggest that new therapies could be designed to target these nutrient-dependent mechanisms to help T cells remain active in patients with chronic diseases like HIV or cancer.