Transcriptomic profiling of fluorescence-activated cell sorted subsets of nasal epithelial cells

We performed fluorescence-activated cell sorting of air-liquid interface cultures of primary nasal epithelial cells from healthy subjects. We used the basal cell marker CD271 (NGFR), the secretory cell marker CD66c (CEACAM5) and the Tubulin Tracker (Tub), which identifies ciliated cells by their high content of acetylated alfa-tubulin in the cilia. This was followed by transcriptomic profiling of the sorted populations in order to verify isolation of the individual airway cell types based on these markers.