Imaging the immune system articles from across Nature Portfolio

A subset of Macro-positive macrophages is identified to have immunosuppressive functions in the periportal vein zones of the liver to mediate excessive inflammation, and their effects depend on commensal gut bacteria.

Studies in mice show that effector T regulatory cells in the gut are most functional in the lamina propria, but this homeostatic niche is disrupted in inflammation, suggesting a spatial mechanism of tolerance to commensal microorganisms.

This study develops a method for spatially resolving multipotent haematopoiesis, erythropoiesis and lymphopoiesis in mice and uncovers heterogeneous haematopoietic stress responses in different bones.

The migration of T cells into tumours and how this is regulated by metabolic pathways is not completely understood. Here the authors use human and xenograft mouse models to explore the functional changes in T cells during migration in tumours and how glycolytic and TCA cycle metabolism is involved.

Three-dimensional analysis of the intact bone marrow within whole long bones remains very challenging. Here, the authors present a method that stabilizes the marrow and provides subcellular resolution of fluorescent signals throughout the murine femur.

Understanding the ontogeny of conventional dendritic cells (cDCs) is a major aim in the field. The fate of progenitors of the recently described subsets of mouse cDC2s (cDC2A and cDC2B) is determined in the bone marrow.

We profiled human central nervous system (CNS)-associated macrophages (CAMs) in anatomically dissected CNS interface tissue from typical, fetal and glioblastoma-affected brains using single-cell multi-omics and spatially resolved transcriptomic techniques. Analyses of CAM (and microglia) turnover rates in stem-cell-transplanted glioblastoma and prenatal tissues highlighted the developmental phenotypes of these cells in patients, which lays the groundwork for potential replacement therapies.

Cytotoxic T cells fight pathogens and cancer by forming stereotyped cytotoxic immune synapses with infected or transformed target cells. We found that architectural changes in apoptotic target cells trigger the dissolution of immune synapses, providing a mechanistic basis for efficient synaptic turnover and serial killing.

A preprint by Sbierski-Kind et al. shows that IL-33-producing adventitial fibroblasts provide a stromal niche for ILC2s that limits IL-17-mediated liver fibrosis.

Many immune cell subsets move in an amoeboid fashion and do not require strong adhesive interactions with their surrounding when moving through interstitial tissue spaces. In stark contrast, we show that mast cells critically depend on integrin-mediated adhesion and interactions with the extracellular matrix to enable slow migration and site-specific positioning in tissues.