Single-cell multiomics reveals stage of differentiation and trajectory-dependent immunity-related gene expression patterns in human erythroid cells

Erythroid cells, serving as progenitors and precursors to erythrocytes responsible for oxygen transport, exhibit a notable immunosuppressive and immunoregulatory phenotype. The present study CITE-seq reveals that erythroid cells have stage of differentiation-dependent immunity-related gene expression patterns. We also found that Erythroid cell differentiation is not linear and there is a bifurcation of polychromatophilic erythroblasts into ARG1 expressing polychromatophilic erythroblasts and orthochromatophilic erythroblasts. ARG1 expressing polychromatophilic erythroblasts account for almost all immunosuppressive ARG1 gene expression among erythroid cells. Thus, we infer the stepwise erythroid cells differentiation trajectory that has a branch that forms immunosuppressive erythroid cell population. Overall design: Normal Bone Marrow mononuclear cells, B-cell ALL, T-cell ALL cells were acquired pre-treatment in the moment of diagnostic bone marrow biopsy, cells were extracted via Ficoll-paque density gradient centrifugation, barcoded with 28 AbSeq antibodies and 4 Sample Tag antibodies and loaded into BD Rhapsody Express apparatus