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Imaging immune cells

Plasmacytoid dendritic cells turn red!

Nature Immunology volume 24, pages 563–564 (2023)Cite this article

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Taking advantage of intersectional genetics, Valente et al. report a novel strategy for tracking plasmacytoid dendritic cells (DCs) that enables their discrimination from conventional DCs and plasmacytoid DC–like cells, as well as transitional DCs.

The authors showed that under steady-state conditions, initial induction of tdTomato occurred on the recently identified committed pre-pDC subset that is characterized by the expression of IL-7R, SiglecH and Ly6D among cKit+Flt3+ bone marrow progenitors4. Unfortunately, they found no expression of tdTomato on other progenitor subsets, in particular common DC precursors5 or Ly6C+SiglecH+ pre-DCs6, or in any so-far-identified precursor subset that maintains dual DC and pDC differentiation potential. It remains to be determined how these precursors are located within the hierarchy of hematopoietic progenitors, which suggests that the right tools for addressing this question are yet to be generated. Some controversy around the topic remains, with original studies suggesting that common DC precursors are the main source of pDCs7, and some recent reports showing that the majority of pDCs are derived from a lymphoid progenitor4. Unfortunately, the expression of certain markers has traditionally locked the perspective of how to assign progenitors into a branching system that allows little plasticity, despite the experimental evidence for this8.

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Fig. 1: Tracking pDCs during MCMV infection.

References

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  1. National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Roxane Tussiwand

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Correspondence to Roxane Tussiwand.

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Tussiwand, R. Plasmacytoid dendritic cells turn red!. Nat Immunol 24, 563–564 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-023-01472-7

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