T cell intrinsic NOD2 is dispensable for CD8 T cell immunity

NOD2 is an intracellular pattern recognition receptor that provides innate sensing of bacterial muramyl dipeptide by host cells, such as dendritic cells, macrophages and epithelial cells. While NOD2's role as an innate pathogen sensor is well established, NOD2 is also expressed at low levels in T cells and there are conflicting data as to whether NOD2 plays an intrinsic role in T cell function. Here we show that following adoptive transfer into WT hosts, NOD2(-/-) OT-I T cells show a small decrease in the number of OVA-specific CD8 T cells recovered at the peak of the response to respiratory influenza virus infection. On the other hand, no such defect was observed upon intranasal immunization with a replication defective adenovirus carrying the OVA epitope recognized by OT-I, or when OVA was delivered with LPS subcutaneously, or when influenza-OVA was delivered intraperitoneally. Thus we observed a selective defect in NOD2-deficient T cell responses only during a live viral infection. Moreover, there was no apparent defect when NOD2(-/-) OT-I T cells were stimulated in vitro. Finally, this selective defect in recovery of NOD2-deficient CD8 T cells was not observed in a non-transgenic respiratory infection model in which mixed bone marrow chimeras were used such that the NOD2(-/-) T cells were allowed to develop and respond in a NOD2-sufficient host. Taken together our data indicate that T cell intrinsic NOD2 is not required for CD8 T cell responses to antigen delivered under a variety of conditions in vitro and in vivo. However, CD8 T cells that have developed in the absence of NOD2 show a selective and modest impairment in their response to live respiratory influenza infection.