Differences in levels of environmentally induced memory T cells that cross-react with donor MHC molecules are postulated to account for the efficacy of allograft tolerance inducing strategies in rodents versus their failure in nonhuman primates and human transplant patients. Strategies to study the impact of donor-reactive memory T cells on allografts in rodents have relied on the pre-transplant induction of memory T cells cross-reactive with donor allogeneic MHC molecules through recipient viral infection, priming directly with donor antigen, or adoptive transfer of donor-antigen primed memory T cells. Each approach accelerates allograft rejection and confers resistance to tolerance induction, but also biases the T cell repertoire to strong donor-reactivity. The ability of endogenous memory T cells within unprimed mice to directly reject an allograft is unknown. Here we show a direct association between increased duration of cold ischemic allograft storage and numbers and enhanced functions of early graft infiltrating endogenous CD8 memory T cells. These T cells directly mediate rejection of allografts subjected to prolonged ischemia and this rejection is resistant to costimulatory blockade. These findings recapitulate the clinically significant impact of endogenous memory T cells with donor reactivity in a mouse transplant model in the absence of prior recipient priming.

Cell-cell contact–dependent mechanisms that modulate proliferation and/or differentiation in the context of hematopoiesis include mechanisms characteristic of the interactions between members of the Notch family of signal transduction molecules and their ligands. Whereas Notch family members and their ligands clearly modulate T lymphopoietic decisions, evidence for their participation in modulating myelopoiesis is much less clear, and roles for posttranslational control of Notch-dependent signal transduction in myelopoiesis are unexplored. We report here that a myeloproliferative phenotype in FX−/− mice, which are conditionally deficient in cellular fucosylation, is consequent to loss of Notch-dependent signal transduction on myeloid progenitor cells. In the context of a wild-type fucosylation phenotype, we find that the Notch ligands suppress myeloid differentiation of progenitor cells and enhance expression of Notch target genes. By contrast, fucosylation-deficient myeloid progenitors are insensitive to the suppressive effects of Notch ligands on myelopoiesis, do not transcribe Notch1 target genes when cocultured with Notch ligands, and have lost the wild-type Notch ligand-binding phenotype. Considered together, these observations indicate that Notch-dependent signaling controls myelopoiesis in vivo and in vitro and identifies a requirement for Notch fucosylation in the expression of Notch ligand binding activity and Notch signaling efficiency in myeloid progenitors.

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