Identification and characterization of human CD34+ and CD34dim/- neutrophil-committed progenitors [Bulk RNA-seq]

Here we report the identification of human CD66b-CD64dimCD115- neutrophil-committed progenitor cells (NCPs) within the SSCloCD45dimCD34+ and CD34dim/- subsets in the bone marrow. NCPs were either CD45RA+ or CD45RA-, and in vitro experiments showed that CD45RA acquisition was not mandatory for their maturation process. NCPs exclusively generated human CD66b+ neutrophils in both in vitro differentiation and in vivo adoptive transfer experiments. Single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis indicated NCPs fell into four clusters, characterized by different maturation stages and distributed along two differentiation routes. One of the clusters was characterized by an interferon-stimulated gene signature, consistent with the reported expansion of peripheral mature neutrophil subsets that express interferon-stimulated genes in diseased individuals. Finally, comparison of transcriptomic and phenotypic profiles indicated NCPs represented earlier neutrophil precursors than the previously described early neutrophil progenitors (eNePs), proNeus and COVID-19 proNeus. Altogether, our data shed light on the very early phases of neutrophil ontogeny. Overall design: Examination of the gene expression profiles of neutrophil-committed progenitors (NCPs), promyelocytes (PMs), myelocytes (MYs) metamyelocytes (MMs), band cells (BCs) and segmented neutrophils (SNs) from BMs as well as peripheral blood neutrophils (PMN), isolated by cell sorting by using a Becton Dickinson FACS Aria Fusion (BD Biosciences)