Single-cell RNA-seq reveals new types of human blood dendritic cells, monocytes and progenitors

作者：A. Villani, R. Satija, G. Reynolds, Siranush Sarkizova, Karthik Shekhar, J. Fletcher, M. Griesbeck, Andrew W. Butler, Shi-Wei Zheng, S. Lazo, Laura Jardine, D. Dixon, Emily Stephenson, Emil Nilsson, I. Grundberg, David McDonald, A. Filby, Weibo Li, P. De Jager, O. Rozenblatt-Rosen, A. Lane, M. Haniffa, A. Regev, N. Hacohen · 发表于：Science · 年份：2017 · DOI：10.1126/science.aah4573 · 被引用次数：2249 · 研究领域：Biology、Medicine

What's in a drop of blood? Blood contains many types of cells, including many immune system components. Immune cells used to be characterized by marker-based assays, but now classification relies on the genes that cells express. Villani et al. used deep sequencing at the single-cell level and unbiased clustering to define six dendritic cell and four monocyte populations. This refined analysis has identified, among others, a previously unknown dendritic cell population that potently activates T cells. Further cell culture revealed possible differentiation progenitors within the different cell populations. Science, this issue p. eaah4573 Discovery of additional immune cell subtypes will help identify functions and immune monitoring during disease. INTRODUCTION Dendritic cells (DCs) and monocytes consist of multiple specialized subtypes that play a central role in pathogen sensing, phagocytosis, and antigen presentation. However, their identities and interrelationships are not fully understood, as these populations have historically been defined by a combination of morphology, physical properties, localization, functions, developmental origins, and expression of a restricted set of surface markers. RATIONALE To overcome this inherently biased strategy for cell identification, we performed single-cell RNA sequencing of ~2400 cells isolated from healthy blood donors and enriched for HLA-DR+ lineage− cells. This single-cell profiling strategy and unbiased genomic classification, to...