Project description:Thymic atrophy and the progressive immune decline that accompanies it is a major health problem, chronically with age and acutely with immune injury. We used single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to analyze the diversity of mesenchymal niche cells (ThyMC) in human and murine thymi.
Project description:The thymic microenvironment is essential for proper differentiation and selection of thymocytes.Thymic involution in aged mice results in decreased T cell output and immune function. Here we use gene expression profiling of FACS sorted thymic stromal subsets to identify molecular mediators of thymocyte: stromal cell interactions, as well as gene expression changes thymic stromal subsets during early stages of thymic involution . We used microarrays to analyze gene expression differences between thymic stromal subsets from male C57BL/6J mice 1, 3, and 6 months of age. Thymic stromal subsets (cTEC, mTEClo, mTEChi, Sirpa-DC, Sirpa+DC, and fibroblasts) were isolated from two 1-, 3-, and 6- month old male C57BL/6J mice. After enzymatic digestion of the thymi, the stromal cells were FACS purified, and RNA was extracted, amplified, labeled and hybridized to Affymetrix mouse 430 2.0 arraysarrays. Raw data were uploaded to Gene Expression Commons for normalization. Both raw CEL and normalized datasets from the 36 samples are included. A model within Gene Expression Commons has been created for analyses/comparisons of these datasets, along with previously reported thymocyte subset datasets. The model within Gene Expression Commons thus contains 6 thymic stromal populations, each from mice 1, 3, and 6 months of age, with duplicates for each datset.
Project description:The thymic microenvironment is essential for proper differentiation and selection of thymocytes.Thymic involution in aged mice results in decreased T cell output and immune function. Here we use gene expression profiling of FACS sorted thymic stromal subsets to identify molecular mediators of thymocyte: stromal cell interactions, as well as gene expression changes thymic stromal subsets during early stages of thymic involution . We used microarrays to analyze gene expression differences between thymic stromal subsets from male C57BL/6J mice 1, 3, and 6 months of age.
Project description:Adipocyte deposition is believed to be a primary characteristic of age-related thymic involution, but the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms remain unknown. We show here that thymic mesenchymal stromal cells (tMSCs) have a higher tendency to differentiate into adipocytes and melanocortin-2 receptor accessory protein (MRAP) is a potential driver of tMSCs adipogenesis. Furthermore, we discover that thymosin-α1 promotes MRAP expression in tMSCs through FoxO1 signaling pathway. Additionally, the proportion of tMSCs increase in older mice compared to young mice. Importantly, MRAP is also necessary for human thymic MSCs to differentiate into adipocytes when exposed to thymosin-α1. Single-cell RNA-seq analysis of human thymus revealed an accumulation of tMSCs and adipocytes during aging, indicating a strong potential for adipogenic differentiation in age-related thymic involution. Thus, we have revealed MRAP as a key factor in promoting thymic MSCs adipogenesis triggered by thymosin-α1 and FoxO1 pathway, which may serve as potential target to hinder adiposity in age-related thymic involution.