Advances of mass cytometry and high-dimensional single-cell data analysis have brought cellular immunological research into a new generation. By coupling these two powerful technology platforms, immunologists now have more tools to resolve the tremendous diversity of immune cell subsets, and their heterogeneous functionality. Since the first introduction of mass cytometry, many reports have been published using this novel technology to study a range of cell types. At the outset, studies of human hematopoietic stem cell and peripheral CD8(+) T cells using mass cytometry have shad the light of future experimental approach in interrogating immune cell phenotypic and functional diversity. Here, we briefly revisit the past and present understanding of T cell heterogeneity, and the technologies that facilitate this knowledge. In addition, we review the current progress of mass cytometry and high-dimensional cytometric analysis, including the methodology, panel design, experimental procedure, and choice of computational algorithms with a special focus on their utility in exploration of human T cell immunology.
Keywords: Antigen-specific T cells; Bioinformatics; CD8(+) T cells; Combinatorial tetramer strategy; Helper T cells; High-dimensional analysis; Mass cytometry; T cell heterogeneity.
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