Abstract
Dendritic cells (DCs) are professional antigen-presenting cells (APCs). The key functions of DCs include engulfing, processing and presenting antigens to T cells and regulating the activation of T cells. There are two major DC subtypes in human blood: plasmacytoid DCs (pDCs) and conventional DCs. To define the differences between the adult and infant immune systems, especially in terms of DC constitution, we enriched DCs from human cord blood and generated single-cell RNA sequencing data from about 7000 cells using the 10x Genomics Single Cell 3′ Solution. After incorporating the differential expression analysis method in our clustering process, we identified all the known dendritic cell subsets. Interestingly, we also found a group of DCs with gene expression that was a mix of megakaryocytes and pDCs. Further, we verified the expression of selected genes at both the RNA level by PCR and the protein level by flow cytometry. This study further demonstrates the power of single-cell RNA sequencing in dendritic cell research.
Highlights
Dendritic cells (DCs) are professional antigenpresenting cells and are essential regulators of adaptive immune responses
DCs are divided into three major subsets, include plasmacytoid DCs and two types of ‘‘conventional’’ or ‘‘classical’’ DCs, called cDC1s and cDC2s and each subset is controlled in development by a specific repertoire of transcription factors (Merad et al 2013). pDCs produce large quantities of type I interferon upon exposure to different viruses and are called interferon-producing cells
We recently reported that a distinct CD56? DC subpopulation exists in human blood that expresses pDC-specific surface markers (CD123 and BDCA2) but shares similar functions with cDCs (Yu et al 2015)
Summary
Dendritic cells (DCs) are professional antigenpresenting cells and are essential regulators of adaptive immune responses. They are derived from bone marrow and exist in both lymphoid and nonlymphoid tissues. DCs are small in number, as they constitute only *1% of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (Ginhoux et al 2018), their subsets are heterogeneous and have diverse functions. DC subpopulation exists in human blood that expresses pDC-specific surface markers (CD123 and BDCA2) but shares similar functions with cDCs (Yu et al 2015). We found that human blood cDC2s can be further divided into two subsets (CD5high and CD5low) that differ significantly in both gene expression and function (Yin et al 2017)
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