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DCs are ready to commit

Nature Immunology volume 16, pages 683–685 (2015)Cite this article

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Dendritic cell progenitors commit to a specific conventional dendritic cell fate earlier than previously thought, by initiating transcription-factor regulatory circuits unique to their subtype.

Dendritic cells (DCs) are a critical compartment of innate immunity and perform several specialized immunological functions1. In this issue of Nature Immunology, two studies critically contribute to the understanding of DC origins by demonstrating how progenitor cells commit to the various DC subtypes in mice through distinct intermediate stages. Schlitzer et al. use single-cell mRNA sequencing to analyze the heterogeneity of progenitor DC populations and find, among individual cells, varying levels of commitment to develop into specific conventional DCs (cDCs)2. Grajales-Reyes et al. use mice with expression of green fluorescent protein (GFP) from the locus encoding the transcription factor Zbtb46, selectively expressed by cDCs (Zbtb46GFP), and a defined sorting scheme to identify progenitors of cDC subtypes. Through the use of chromatin profiling, they identify the transcription factor IRF8 as a critical factor in the early regulatory circuits that lock cDC fate3.

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Figure 1: Proposed models for DC development.

Marina Corral Spence/Nature Publishing Group

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Deborah R. Winter and Ido Amit are in the Department of Immunology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.,

    Deborah R Winter & Ido Amit

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  1. Deborah R Winter
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  2. Ido Amit
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Correspondence to Deborah R Winter or Ido Amit.

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Winter, D., Amit, I. DCs are ready to commit. Nat Immunol 16, 683–685 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ni.3208

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