An Atlas of Cells in the Human Tonsil

Palatine tonsils are secondary lymphoid organs representing the first line of immunological defense against inhaled or ingested pathogens. Here, we provide a comprehensive census of cell types forming the human tonsil by applying single cell transcriptome, epigenome, proteome and adaptive immune repertoire as well as spatial transcriptomics, resulting in an atlas of >350,000 cells. We provide a glossary of over one hundred annotated cell types and states, and disentangle gene regulatory mechanisms that drive cells through specialized lineage trajectories. Exemplarily, we stratify multiple tonsil-resident myeloid slancyte subtypes, establish a distant BCL6 superenhancer as locally active in both follicle-associated T and B cells, and describe SIX5 as a potentially novel transcriptional regulator of plasma cell maturation. Further, our atlas is a reference map to understand alterations observed in disease, here we discover immune-phenotype plasticity in tumoral cells and microenvironment shifts of mantle cell lymphomas (MCL). To facilitate such reference-based analysis, we develop HCATonsilData and SLOcatoR, a computational framework that provides programmatic and modular access to our dataset; and allows the straightforward annotation of future single-cell profiles from secondary lymphoid organs.EGA study EGAS00001006375