Dietary antigens influence the antigen presentation pathway of small intestine epithelium

Epithelial cells of the small intestine are designed to absorb the nutrients from the diet, so we tested if the absence of dietary macromolecules and protein antigens had an impact on the physiological condition of IECs. We generated RNAseq data from small intestine IECs isolated from mice free of any conventional non-self antigens for TCRab T cells. A comparison with RNAseq data generated from IECs isolated from SPF or GF mice showed clear differences between the transcriptomes of IECs isolated from the AF, SPF or GF mice. mRNA were purified from small intestinal epithelial cells of SPF, GF or AF mice and sequenced using Nextseq 500 (Illumina).