Figure 3: Naïve Dock2^hsd/hsd T cells exhibit memory-like characteristics.

(A) Top twenty differentially enriched immunological gene signatures among naïve and memory phenotype CD8⁺ T cells from wild-type and Dock2^hsd/hsd mice.

(B) Top ten differentially enriched immunological gene signatures between wild-type and Dock2^hsd/hsd naïve CD8⁺ T cells. Gene sets linked to memory T cell differentiation are marked with a star in A and B. In both A and B, the heatmaps are colored by the GSVA enrichment score.

(C) Gene set enrichment analysis of genes upregulated in CD8⁺ naive (CD44^loCD122⁻⁻) Dock2^hsd/hsd T cells compared to WT naive CD8⁺ T cells. Significantly enriched pathways linked to memory T cell differentiation are shown.

(D) Overlap among the enriched gene sets linked to memory CD8⁺ T cell differentiation shown in A, B and C. Only the starred overlaps are significantly enriched in naive CD8⁺ (CD44^loCD122⁻⁻) Dock2^hsd/hsd T cells compared to wild-type by GSEA analysis.

(E,F and G) The repertoire diversity of naïve and memory phenotype (MP) CD8⁺ T cells from Dock2-deficient and wild-type mice assessed using the Shannon-Wiener diversity index (E) and visualized by scaling the area and color of the clonotypes by their abundance (F) or using a rarefaction plot (G).

(H) Repertoire convergence (F) (i.e. number of unique CDR3 nucleotide sequences that encode the same amino acid sequence) in naive (CD44^loCD122⁻) and MP (CD44^hiCD122⁺) T cells from WT and Dock2^hsd/hsd mice. Statistical significance was assessed using unpaired two-tailed Student’s t test.

(I) A hierarchically clustered heatmap of the frequency of TCR Vβ gene segment usage in naive (CD44^loCD122⁻⁻) and MP (CD44^hiCD122⁺) CD8⁺ T cells from Dock^hsd/hsd and WT mice.