New research from UBC and the University of Manitoba explores the developmental origins of the human immune system and reveals unexpected lineage relationships and new important transcription factors.
A recent paper, published in Cell Systems, from Dr. Peter Zandstra, Dr. Yale Michaels (University of Manitoba) and team provides insights that could pave the way for improving immune cell therapies and better understanding immune development. The team used stem cell technology to unravel how blood stem cells develop into T cells, essential players in our immune system that can also be used as living therapeutics. Using advanced single-cell sequencing, computational biology and genetic tools, they mapped key gene activity and identified the protein YBX1 as a critical regulator of this process. Surprisingly, they also found that mast cells, an immune cell type involved in allergies whose developmental origins have remained unclear, are closer to T cells on the immune cell family tree than previously thought.