
Preprint Club
A cross-institutional Journal Club Initiative
Skin-resident immune cells actively coordinate their distribution with epidermal cells during homeostasis
Park S. et al. (MedRxiv) DOI: 10.1101/2021.01.08.425932

Keywords
Skin immunology
Immune cell distribution
Immune-epithelial crosstalk
Main Findings
Park et al investigated the interaction of immune cells and epithelial cells during homeostasis. In order to track different cell types over time in vivo, they generated a mouse line which labelled the three main cell types resident in the skin; Langerhans cells (LCs), dendritic epidermal T cells (DTECs) and epithelial cells. Using an established in vivo imaging approach, they uncovered that epithelial cells regulate immune cell composition in the epidermis. LCs and DTECs reside in the basal layer of the epidermis and maintain their position in a non-random tiling pattern. The GTPase Rac1 plays a crucial role in LCs to maintain their positional stability, density and tiling pattern.
Limitations
How exactly the epithelial cells regulate LC and DTEC distribution remains unknown
Whether or not Rac1 plays a similar role in DTECs
Significance/Novelty
Discerning the interaction of immune cells with epithelial cells in vivo and in real time offers new tools in visualising and understanding the establishment of homeostasis
Tools established might be used in other systems and lay the ground for further examinations into mechanisms and behaviour in non-homeostatic conditions.
Credit
Reviewed by Dorothée Berthold as part of the cross-institutional journal club of the Immunology Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai and the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, University of Oxford.