A novel approach to single-cell analysis reveals intrinsic differences in immune marker expression in unstimulated BALB/c and C57BL/6 macrophages

FEBS Letters

article

Jeremie Breda¹  Arka Banerjee¹  Rajesh Jayachandran¹  Jean Pieters¹  Mihaela Zavolan¹ 

[1] Biozentrum, University of Basel;Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics

关键词: BALB/c mice;    C57BL/6 mice;    M1/M2 markers;    macrophage heterogeneity;    scRNA-seq;   

DOI  :  10.1002/1873-3468.14478

来源: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

【 摘 要 】

The origin of functional heterogeneity among macrophages, key innate immune system components, is still debated. While mouse strains differ in their immune responses, the range of gene expression variation among their pre-stimulation macrophages is unknown. With a novel approach to scRNA-seq analysis, we reveal the gene expression variation in unstimulated macrophage populations from BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice. We show that intrinsic strain-to-strain differences are detectable before stimulation and we place the unstimulated single cells within the gene expression landscape of stimulated macrophages. C57BL/6 mice show stronger evidence of macrophage polarization than BALB/c mice, which may contribute to their relative resistance to pathogens. Our computational methods can be generally adopted to uncover biological variation between cell populations.

【 授权许可】

Unknown