Expression data from porcine monocytes sorted on expression of CD14 and CD163

Human and mouse monocytes can be divided into 2 different sub-populations, using CD14-CD16 and Ly6C-CX3CR1 respectively. We investigated the pig monocytes sub-populations and found that all porcine monocyte express CD16 and CD172α but can be divided into 2 subpopulation using CD14 and the scavenger receptor CD163. The CD14hi-CD163low population resemble to the inflammatory monocytes whereas the CD14low-CD163hi display more a resident monocyte type. Pig monocyte can be differentiated into macrophages when cultured with rhCSF-1 and show an increase in size, granularity and autofluorescence, and express the common macrophage markers CD14, CD16 and CD172α. Gene expression in these 2 sub-populations was profiled using the newly-developed and annotated pig whole genome snowball microarray, showing a distinct pattern between inflammatory and resident monocytes but this difference would be more a maturation process instead of two separate subsets. Furthermore, the expression of certain genes such as CD36, CLEC4E or TREM-1 proved to share the same pattern as human monocytes, quite different from mouse monocytes. These results emphasize the potential role of the pigs as a model for human inflammatory disease and will improved our knowledge on the mononuclear phagocyte system development. Porcine PBMCs were isolated from the blood of three seperate pigs, FACS sorted on expression of CD14 and CD163 and RNA isolated from each sample, a total of 6 microarrays were hybridised