Landscape and age dynamics of immune cells in the Egyptian Rousette Bat

Bats harbor high-impact zoonotic viruses in absence of clinical disease, which has been recently associated with unique features of their immune system. They seem to restrict inflammation and possibly limit disease manifestation to a minimum. In-depth characterization of cellular immunity in bats is yet largely missing, and imprinting of age and development on immune cell compartments remains unexplored. We employed single-cell transcriptomics and established immunostaining panels to investigate the immune cell populations peripheral blood for juvenile and adult Egyptian Rousette bats (ERB). Overall design: Total of 4 samples as 4 different 10x gene expression libraries prepared from ERB blood. Libraries A1 and A2 contain data about single-cell leukocytes extracted from peripheral blood of respectively three ERB adults and three ERB juveniles. Both blood collection and preparation of A1/A2 libraries were conducted on parallel on the same day. Library A5 contains data about single-cell leukocytes extracted from peripheral blood of one ERB adult and two ERB subadults. Library A6 contains data about single-cell leukocytes collected from the PBMC fraction of one ERB adult and two ERB subadults. Libraries A5 and A6 were prepared on the same day from the same 3 animals.