Single cell analysis of murine Dendritic Epidermal T Cells (DETC)

Purpose: To establish the steady state heterogeneity of murine Dendritic Epidermal T Cells (DETC) and to investigate the function of their constitutive interaction with neighbouring keratinocytes via Skint1 Methods: CD3+ cells were FACS purified from ear epidermal suspensions prepared from FVB mice administered isotype control or anti-Skint1 antibody 7d prior, then loaded into the 10x Genomics Chromium Platform and sequenced using Illumina HiSeq 4000. Conclusions: This analysis identifies four states of DETC in unperturbed epidermis, and reveals that DETC TCR sensing of keratinocytes via Skint1 potentially enables natural immune surveillance and maintains their thymic maturation signature in the periphery Epidermal T cells sorted from iostype- or anti-Skint1-treated mouse skin were used for single-cell RNA-sequencing (10xGenomics Chromium Platform), and sequenced using Illumina HiSeq 4000.