Transcriptional profiles of human blood dendritic cell (DC) subsets at steady state

Innate sensing of viruses by dendritic cells (DCs) is critical for the initiation of anti-viral adaptive immune responses. Virus, however, have evolved to suppress immune activation in infected cells. We now analyze the susceptibility of different populations of dendritic cells to viral infections. We find that circulating human CD1c+ DCs support infection by HIV and influenza virus. Viral infection of CD1c+ DCs is essential for virus-specific CD8+ T cell activation and cytosolic sensing of the virus. In contrast, circulating human CD141+ DCs and pDCs constitutively limit viral fusion. The small GTPase RAB15 mediates this differential viral resistance in DC subsets through selective expression in CD141+ DCs and pDCs. Therefore, dendritic cell sub-populations evolved constitutive resistance mechanisms to mitigate viral infection during induction of antiviral immune response. Examination of transcriptional profiles in 4 DC subsets purified from 3 donors using RNASeq