Batf-mediated epigenetic control of effector CD8 T cell differentiation.

The response of naive CD8 T cells to their cognate antigen involves rapid and broad changes to gene expression that are coupled with extensive chromatin remodeling, but the mechanisms governing these changes are not fully understood. Here, we investigated how these changes depend on the basic leucine zipper ATF-like transcription factor Batf, which is essential for the early phases of the process. Through genome scale profiling, we characterized the role of Batf in chromatin organization at several levels, including the accessibility of key regulatory regions, the expression of their nearby genes, and the interactions that these regions form with each other and with key transcription factors.

Clinical Experience With a Multidisciplinary Model of Vascular Ultrasound for the Evaluation for Giant Cell Arteritis.

Objective: Vascular ultrasound (VUS) is a first-line test for giant cell arteritis (GCA) in Europe but has been of limited use in the United States. We report clinical experience with a multidisciplinary model of VUS for the evaluation of GCA at a large US medical center.

Methods: Patients who underwent VUS for evaluation of GCA between 2013 and 2017 were reviewed.

Follow-up vascular ultrasounds in patients with giant cell arteritis.

Objectives: Literature describing follow-up vascular ultrasound (VUS) in giant cell arteritis (GCA) is limited. We report our experience with follow-up VUS obtained in clinical care of patients with GCA.

Methods: We retrospectively identified GCA patients with an abnormal initial VUS, defined as circumferential hypoechoic wall thickening ("halo sign"), or circumferential hyperechoic wall thickening without evidence of arteriosclerosis or arteritis, who subsequently underwent follow-up VUS during 2013-2018.

Deep conservation of genes required for both Drosphila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans sleep includes a role for dopaminergic signaling.

Objectives: Cross-species conservation of sleep-like behaviors predicts the presence of conserved molecular mechanisms underlying sleep. However, limited experimental evidence of conservation exists. Here, this prediction is tested directly.

The transcription factor BATF operates as an essential differentiation checkpoint in early effector CD8+ T cells.

The transcription factor BATF is required for the differentiation of interleukin 17 (IL-17)-producing helper T cells (TH17 cells) and follicular helper T cells (TFH cells). Here we identified a fundamental role for BATF in regulating the differentiation of effector of CD8(+) T cells. BATF-deficient CD8(+) T cells showed profound defects in effector population expansion and underwent proliferative and metabolic catastrophe early after encountering antigen.