Profiling the transcriptome of human thymic epithelial cell subsets

RNA-seq libraries were generated on thymic epithelial cell (TEC) subsets from thymic samples (11 days to 3 months of age). Cells were sorted to isolate cortical TEC (cTEC), MHC low medullary TEC (mTEClo) and MHC high medullary TEC (mTEChi). Between 7,575 and 50,000 cells were isolated for each sample. TEC were isolated using CD45 MACS depletion followed by the sorting protocol described in Stoeckler et al. J Vis Exp 2013 (PMID 24084687; doi: 10.3791/50951). The study has been granted ethical approval and is publicly listed (IRAS ID 156910, CPMS 19587). 1 sample for each of cTEC, mTEClo and mTEChi were generated on a total of 3 individuals (~50,000 cells per sample) and 3 replicates for each of cTEC, mTEClo and mTEChi were generated on 1 individual (7,575 cells per sample). Sequencing data were anonymised by aligning, masking mismatches to reference sequence and re-converting to fastq files.