A Single-cell Analysis of Thymopoiesis and Thymic INKT Cell Development in Pigs

Overview

Journal Cell Rep

Publisher Cell Press

Specialties Biology
Cell Biology
Molecular Biology

Date 2022 Jul 6

PMID 35793622

Authors

Weihong Gu

Darling Melany C Madrid

Sebastian Joyce

John P Driver

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Many aspects of the porcine immune system remain poorly characterized, which poses a barrier to improving swine health and utilizing pigs as preclinical models. Here, we employ single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to create a cell atlas of the early-adolescent pig thymus. Our data show conserved features as well as species-specific differences in cell states and cell types compared with human thymocytes. We also describe several unconventional T cell types with gene expression profiles associated with innate effector functions. This includes a cell census of more than 11,000 differentiating invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells, which reveals that the functional diversity of pig iNKT cells differs substantially from the iNKT0/1/2/17 subset differentiation paradigm established in mice. Our data characterize key differentiation events in porcine thymopoiesis and iNKT cell maturation and provide important insights into pig T cell development.

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