Human Early Postnatal Thymus [CITE-seq]

Within the thymus, regulation of the cellular cross-talk directing T cell development is dependent on spatial interactions within specialized niches. To create a holistic, spatially defined map of tissue niches guiding postnatal T cell development we employed the multidimensional imaging platform CO-detection by indEXing (CODEX), as well as Cellular Indexing of Transcriptomes and Epitopes by Sequencing (CITE-seq) and Assay for Transposable-Accessible Chromatin (ATAC-seq). We generated age-matched 4–5-month-old postnatal thymus datasets for both male and female donors, and describe signaling and cell-cell interaction networks in sequential thymocyte developmental niches. Together, these data represent a unique age-matched spatial multiomic resource to investigate how sex-based differences in thymus regulation and T cell development arise, and provide an essential resource to understand the mechanisms underlying immune function and dysfunction in males and females. Overall design: 4-5 month old sex-matched human thymus + a 33-month-old human thymus samples were processed prior to sequencing to enrich for CD45- and CD25+CD8- cells. See Stankiewicz et al. 2023 (BioRxiv) for experimental details.