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The mechanisms underlying innate lymphoid cell (ILC) development and function in the neonatal lung remain incompletely defined. ILCs are critical mediators of early-life innate immune responses in the lung. Dysregulation of ILC homeostasis has both immediate and long-lasting effects on lung health. We generated single-cell transcriptomic and epigenetic datasets from the lungs of neonatal and young adult mice that includes subsets of type 1 (natural killer, NK cells) type 2 (ILC2) and type 3 (ILC3) cells. These datasets include mice subjected to early life antibiotic-induced dysbiosis, thereby modeling a common perturbation of the developing immune system in humans. Analysis of cell-cell communication and gene regulation in these datasets reveals underappreciated aspects of lung ILC biology, including marked interleukin-4 (IL-4) signaling in neonatal lung ILC2. This data represents a valuable resource for hypothesis generation regarding the molecular regulation of ILC gene expression and function in the neonatal lung.
Bonfield et al. (Sun,) studied this question.