S1P-dependent inter-organ trafficking of group 2 innate lymphoid cells supports host defense

Innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) are considered to be the innate counterparts of adaptive T lymphocytes and play important roles in host defense, tissue repair, metabolic homeostasis, and inflammatory diseases. ILCs are generally thought of as tissue-resident cells, but whether ILCs strictly behave in a tissue-resident manner or can move between sites during infection is unclear. We show here that IL-25- or helminthic infection-induced inflammatory ILC2s are not tissue-resident but circulating cells, which arise from resting ILC2s residing in intestinal lamina propria and then migrate to mesenteric lymph nodes, spleen, lung, and liver. IL-25 induces rapid proliferation of the intestinal ILC2s and a change in their sensitivity to S1P-mediated chemotaxis, leading to lymphatic entry, blood circulation, and accumulation in periphery sites, including the lung where they contribute to anti-helminth defense and tissue repair. Our finding of cytokine-driven expansion and migration of innate lymphocytes, a behavioral parallel to the antigen-driven priming, expansion, and migration of adaptive lymphocytes to effector sites in distant tissues, provides a significant advance in our overall understanding of ILCs and indicates that ILCs complement adaptive immunity by providing both local and distant site effector protection during infection. We examined the transcriptomes of BM ILC2 progenitors, lung nILC2s, IL-33-activated lung nILC2s, intestinal ILC2s, IL-25-induced lung iILC2s, and MLN iILC2s by RNA-Seq.