You are currently viewing the abstract.
View Full TextLog in to view the full text
AAAS login provides access to Science for AAAS members, and access to other journals in the Science family to users who have purchased individual subscriptions.
Register for free to read this article
As a service to the community, this article is available for free. Existing users log in.
More options
Download and print this article for your personal scholarly, research, and educational use.
Buy a single issue of Science for just $15 USD.
Dendritic cell branches
Dendritic cell (DC) subsets have been well studied in mice; however, the relative contribution of ontogeny and tissue microenvironment to DC function in humans is less clear. Now, Heidkamp et al. perform phenotypic and transcriptional profiling of three DC subtypes in different human tissues from a large number of individuals. They find that DC subpopulations in more lympho-hemaotopoietic organs (spleen, thymus, and blood) are more strongly influenced by ontogeny, whereas those from lung and skin may be influenced by the issue microenvironment. The data collected here provide an in depth look at the transcriptional profile of dendritic cell subsets in humans and inform our understanding of human DC biology.
Abstract
In mice, conventional and plasmacytoid dendritic cells (DCs) derive from separate hematopoietic precursors before they migrate to peripheral tissues. Moreover, two classes of conventional DCs (cDC1 and cDC2 DCs) and one class of plasmacytoid DCs (pDCs) have been shown to be transcriptionally and functionally distinct entities. In humans, these three DC subtypes can be identified using the cell surface markers CD1c (cDC2), CD141 (cDC1), and CD303 (pDCs), albeit it remains elusive whether DC functionality is mainly determined by ontogeny or the tissue microenvironment. By phenotypic and transcriptional profiling of these three DC subtypes in different human tissues derived from a large number of human individuals, we demonstrate that DC subpopulations in organs of the lymphohematopoietic system (spleen, thymus, and blood) are strongly defined by ontogeny rather than by signals from the microenvironment. In contrast, DC subsets derived from human lung or skin differed substantially, strongly arguing that DCs react toward modulatory signals from tissue microenvironments. Collectively, the data obtained in this study may serve as a major resource to guide further studies into human DC biology during homeostasis and inflammation.
- Copyright © 2016, American Association for the Advancement of Science
