Figure 3.
Treg cells have greater mitochondrial mass and ROS production than Tcon cells. A) Flow plots and quantitative data from C57BL/6 splenocytes. Treg (CD4+CD25hi) have higher mitochondrial mass per cell (NAO, n = 6) and, under resting conditions, the highest production of ROS (MitoSOX Red, n = 5), compared with Tcon (CD4+CD25–) or non-CD4 cells. D) Foxp3 and ROS production correlate in iTregs and in nTreg. CD4+Foxp3– Tcon from YFP-Foxp3cre mice were stimulated for 3 days with CD3/CD28 mAb and IL-2 (25 U/ml) alone, or with addition of TGF-β (3 ng/ml) to promote iTreg conversion. Foxp3+ iTreg show higher ROS production than T cells that remained Foxp3–. In both iTreg and nTreg, Foxp3 expression was correlated with ROS production. Percentage of maximum (% of max) shows normalization of overlaid data and represents number of cells in each bin divided by the number of cells in the bin that contains the largest number of cells. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001.