Tuft cells and fibroblasts promote thymus regeneration through activation of a type-2 immune response [Tuft_after_Dex]

The goal of this study was to understand the role of thymic tuft cells in thymic regeneration following dexamethasone-induced acute involution, and determine whether this is affected by IL-13, which is produced by ILC2 upon involution and the receptor for which is expressed by tuft cells. For this purpose we treated WT and Il13ra1 KO mice with dexamethasone, sorted tuft cells from their thymi 3 days after treatment when the thymus begins its recovery, at an earlier time point (18 hours) for comparison, or at a later time point (6d) when IL-13 has been released, and performed bulk RNA Seq. Overall design: Young male WT and Il13ra1 KO mice were treated with dexamethasone 6 days/3 days/18 hours before sacrifice, and then thymic tuft cells were isolated and mRNA profiles were generated by deep sequencing using the MARSseq method. 3-5 replicates were used. The control for treated WT mice was untreated WT mice, and the control for treated Il13ra1 KO mice was treated age-matched WT mice.