Elevated IL-7 availability does not account for T cell proliferation in moderate lymphopenia

Lymphopenia-induced proliferation (LIP) is a proliferative program initiated in response to T cell insufficiency caused by acute or chronic immunodepletion. Studies of lymphopenic mice have demonstrated that the cytokine IL-7 and TCR signaling are critical for LIP. We examined how these two factors impact T cell proliferation following transfer into moderately lymphopenic mice. In this study, we show that moderate lymphopenia (∼25% of wild-type lymphocytes) of IL-7Rα knock-in mutant (IL-7Rα449F) mice supports T cell proliferation, although with decreased frequency and kinetics compared with cells transferred to severely lymphopenic (5% of wild-type lymphocytes) IL-7Rα−/− hosts. Although previous studies have demonstrated that elevated IL-7 levels play an important role in LIP, IL-7 availability was not elevated in IL-7Rα449F mice. However, moderate lymphopenia increased access of transferred T cells to self-peptide presented on APCs that can trigger TCR signaling and proliferation. Importantly, we did not detect significant changes in TCR Vβ usage of proliferated T cells recovered from either moderately or severely lymphopenic hosts. Our work demonstrates that polyclonal T cells retain a diverse TCR repertoire following proliferation mediated by either self-peptide–MHC interaction alone or in combination with IL-7, and that T cell reconstitution is most efficient in the presence of increased IL-7 availability.