Targeted localization of the mother centrosome in CD8+ T cells undergoing asymmetric cell division promotes memory formation

How a single, naive T cell can give rise to diverse progenies of effector and memory cells is not completely understood. One way to achieve this is by asymmetric cell division (ACD), characterized by an unequal distribution of cellular cargo, resulting in divergent daughter cells already after the first division-one being more destined to an effector and the other more to a memory fate. Here, we established two methods to analyze the relative distribution of the older "mother"centrosome and the younger "daughter"centrosome during the first cell division of activated CD8+ T cells. We show that upon ACD, the mother centrosome is inherited by the effector-like daughter cell in a ninein-dependent mechanism. Ninein deletion abolished this effect and led to impaired differentiation of memory-like daughter cells. These findings suggest that directed centrosome inheritance upon ACD has functional effects on the fate diversification of CD8+ T cells.