Modulation of occluding junctions alters the hematopoietic niche to trigger immune activation

  1. Rohan J Khadilkar
  2. Wayne Vogl
  3. Katharine Goodwin
  4. Guy Tanentzapf  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

Stem cells are regulated by signals from their microenvironment, or niche. During Drosophila hematopoiesis, a niche regulates prohemocytes to control hemocyte production. Immune challenges activate cell-signalling to initiate the cellular and innate immune response. Specifically, certain immune challenges stimulate the niche to produce signals that induce prohemocyte differentiation. However, the mechanisms that promote prohemocyte differentiation subsequent to immune challenges are poorly understood. Here we show that bacterial infection induces the cellular immune response by modulating occluding-junctions at the hematopoietic niche. Occluding-junctions form a permeability barrier that regulates the accessibility of prohemocytes to niche derived signals. The immune response triggered by infection causes barrier breakdown, altering the prohemocyte microenvironment to induce immune cell production. Moreover, genetically induced barrier ablation provides protection against infection by activating the immune response. Our results reveal a novel role for occluding-junctions in regulating niche-hematopoietic progenitor signalling and link this mechanism to immune cell production following infection.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Rohan J Khadilkar

    Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Wayne Vogl

    Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Katharine Goodwin

    Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Guy Tanentzapf

    Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
    For correspondence
    tanentz@mail.ubc.ca
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2443-233X

Funding

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (G.T.-MOP-272122)

  • Guy Tanentzapf

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2017, Khadilkar et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 3,220
    views
  • 429
    downloads
  • 41
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Rohan J Khadilkar
  2. Wayne Vogl
  3. Katharine Goodwin
  4. Guy Tanentzapf
(2017)
Modulation of occluding junctions alters the hematopoietic niche to trigger immune activation
eLife 6:e28081.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.28081

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.28081

Further reading

    1. Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
    Sujeethkumar Prithiviraj, Alejandro Garcia Garcia ... Paul E Bourgine
    Research Article

    Tissue engineering strategies predominantly rely on the production of living substitutes, whereby implanted cells actively participate in the regenerative process. Beyond cost and delayed graft availability, the patient-specific performance of engineered tissues poses serious concerns on their clinical translation ability. A more exciting paradigm consists in exploiting cell-laid, engineered extracellular matrices (eECMs), which can be used as off-the-shelf materials. Here, the regenerative capacity solely relies on the preservation of the eECM structure and embedded signals to instruct an endogenous repair. We recently described the possibility to exploit custom human stem cell lines for eECM manufacturing. In addition to the conferred standardization, the availability of such cell lines opened avenues for the design of tailored eECMs by applying dedicated genetic tools. In this study, we demonstrated the exploitation of CRISPR/Cas9 as a high precision system for editing the composition and function of eECMs. Human mesenchymal stromal/stem cell (hMSC) lines were modified to knock out vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and Runt-related transcription factor 2 (RUNX2) and assessed for their capacity to generate osteoinductive cartilage matrices. We report the successful editing of hMSCs, subsequently leading to targeted VEGF and RUNX2-knockout cartilage eECMs. Despite the absence of VEGF, eECMs retained full capacity to instruct ectopic endochondral ossification. Conversely, RUNX2-edited eECMs exhibited impaired hypertrophy, reduced ectopic ossification, and superior cartilage repair in a rat osteochondral defect. In summary, our approach can be harnessed to identify the necessary eECM factors driving endogenous repair. Our work paves the road toward the compositional eECMs editing and their exploitation in broad regenerative contexts.

    1. Developmental Biology
    2. Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
    Joshua G Medina-Feliciano, Griselle Valentín-Tirado ... José E Garcia-Arraras
    Research Article

    In holothurians, the regenerative process following evisceration involves the development of a ‘rudiment’ or ‘anlage’ at the injured end of the mesentery. This regenerating anlage plays a pivotal role in the formation of a new intestine. Despite its significance, our understanding of the molecular characteristics inherent to the constituent cells of this structure has remained limited. To address this gap, we employed state-of-the-art scRNA-seq and hybridization chain reaction fluorescent in situ hybridization analyses to discern the distinct cellular populations associated with the regeneration anlage. Through this approach, we successfully identified 13 distinct cell clusters. Among these, two clusters exhibit characteristics consistent with putative mesenchymal cells, while another four show features akin to coelomocyte cell populations. The remaining seven cell clusters collectively form a large group encompassing the coelomic epithelium of the regenerating anlage and mesentery. Within this large group of clusters, we recognized previously documented cell populations such as muscle precursors, neuroepithelial cells, and actively proliferating cells. Strikingly, our analysis provides data for identifying at least four other cellular populations that we define as the precursor cells of the growing anlage. Consequently, our findings strengthen the hypothesis that the coelomic epithelium of the anlage is a pluripotent tissue that gives rise to diverse cell types of the regenerating intestinal organ. Moreover, our results provide the initial view into the transcriptomic analysis of cell populations responsible for the amazing regenerative capabilities of echinoderms.