四川大学胡洪波研究组、解放军总医院第五医学中心刘兵研究组与暨南大学基础医学院兰雨研究组合作，利用单细胞RNA测序解析了人类胚胎胸腺前淋巴祖细胞和胸腺器官发生的时空发育情况。2019年11月18日出版的《免疫》发表了这项成果。

通过使用不同胚胎和胎儿阶段的多个血液和造血部位的细胞，研究人员构建了人类早期T淋巴细胞生成的单细胞转录图谱。在异种早期胸腺祖细胞中，一种亚型与胎儿肝脏中一部分称为胸腺播种祖细胞的淋巴样祖细胞具有共同特征。无偏倚生物信息学分析确定了在主动脉-性腺-中肾（AGM）区域中胸腺前淋巴样祖细胞的独特类型。

同时，研究人员检测了胸腺器官发生过程中胸腺上皮细胞的发育和潜在的细胞间相互作用。因此，这些数据提供了对人类早期T淋巴细胞生成的见解，其可能直接指导T淋巴细胞的再生，并可能会促进临床应用的发展。

据了解，人类胚胎中第一批T淋巴细胞的产生涉及淋巴样祖细胞的出现、迁移和胸腺播种，以及伴随的胸腺器官发生，这是建立整个适应性免疫系统的第一步。但是，尚不清楚调节该过程的细胞和分子程序。

附：英文原文

Title: Single-Cell RNA Sequencing Resolves Spatiotemporal Development of Pre-thymic Lymphoid Progenitors and Thymus Organogenesis in Human Embryos

Author: Yang Zeng, Chen Liu, Yandong Gong, Zhijie Bai, Siyuan Hou, Jian He, Zhilei Bian, Zongcheng Li, Yanli Ni, Jing Yan, Tao Huang, Hui Shi, Chunyu Ma, Xueying Chen, Jinyong Wang, Lihong Bian, Yu Lan, Bing Liu, Hongbo Hu

Issue&Volume: 2019/11/19

Abstract: Generation of the first T lymphocytes in the human embryo involves the emergence,migration, and thymus seeding of lymphoid progenitors together with concomitant thymusorganogenesis, which is the initial step to establish the entire adaptive immune system.However, the cellular and molecular programs regulating this process remain unclear.We constructed a single-cell transcriptional landscape of human early T lymphopoiesisby using cells from multiple hemogenic and hematopoietic sites spanning embryonicand fetal stages. Among heterogenous early thymic progenitors, one subtype sharedcommon features with a subset of lymphoid progenitors in fetal liver that are knownas thymus-seeding progenitors. Unbiased bioinformatics analysis identified a distincttype of pre-thymic lymphoid progenitors in the aorta-gonad-mesonephros (AGM) region.In parallel, we investigated thymic epithelial cell development and potential cell-cellinteractions during thymus organogenesis. Together, our data provide insights intohuman early T lymphopoiesis that prospectively direct T lymphocyte regeneration, whichmight lead to development of clinical applications.

DOI: 10.1016/j.immuni.2019.09.008

Source: https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(19)30404-2