Early innate lymphoid cell progenitor

We identified a new type of bone marrow progenitors termed early innate lymphoid cell progenitor (EILP) using TCF-1 GFP reporter mice. We compared the transcriptomes of early innate lymphoid cell progenitors (EILP) with other early progenitors, including HSC, LMPP, CMP, CLP, ETP and DN3. Bone marrow EILP, HSC, LMPP, flt3+ CMP, flt3- CMP, CLP, and thymic ETP and DN3 were obtained by flow cytometric cell sorting. To obtain sufficient numbers of cells for micro-array analysis, we pooled cells from long-term bone marrow chimeric mice. Chimeric mice were constructed by intravenous inoculation of donor bone marrow cells from TCF-1 GFP reporter mice into lethally irradiated (900 rads) CD45-congenic (B6 CD45.1) recipient mice, and were used at 12 weeks of reconstitution. RNA was extracted by Trizol (Qiagen), amplified by Nugene PicoV2 kit (Nugene), and hybridized with Affymetrix Mouse Gene 2.0 ST Array.