Transcriptional profile of human thymus reveals IGFBP5 is correlated with age-related thymic involution

Front Immunol. 2024 Jan 22:15:1322214. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1322214. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Thymus is the main immune organ which is responsible for the production of self-tolerant and functional T cells, but it shrinks rapidly with age after birth. Although studies have researched thymus development and involution in mouse, the critical regulators that arise with age in human thymus remain unclear. We collected public human single-cell transcriptomic sequencing (scRNA-seq) datasets containing 350,678 cells from 36 samples, integrated them as a cell atlas of human thymus. Clinical samples were collected and experiments were performed for validation. We found early thymocyte-specific signaling and regulons which played roles in thymocyte migration, proliferation, apoptosis and differentiation. Nevertheless, signaling patterns including number, strength and path completely changed during aging, Transcription factors (FOXC1, MXI1, KLF9, NFIL3) and their target gene, IGFBP5, were resolved and up-regulated in aging thymus and involved in promoting epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), responding to steroid and adipogenesis process of thymic epithelial cell (TECs). Furthermore, we validated that IGFBP5 protein increased at TECs and Hassall's corpuscle in both human and mouse aging thymus and knockdown of IGFBP5 significantly increased the expression of proliferation-related genes in thymocytes. Collectively, we systematically explored cell-cell communications and regulons of early thymocytes as well as age-related differences in human thymus by using both bioinformatic and experimental verification, indicating IGFBP5 as a functional marker of thymic involution and providing new insights into the mechanisms of thymus involution.

Keywords: IGFBP5; single-cell RNA sequencing; thymic epithelial cell; thymocyte; thymus involution.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aging* / genetics
  • Cell Differentiation / genetics
  • Humans
  • Insulin-Like Growth Factor Binding Protein 5* / genetics
  • Kruppel-Like Transcription Factors / metabolism
  • Signal Transduction
  • Thymocytes* / metabolism
  • Thymus Gland* / metabolism

Substances

  • KLF9 protein, human
  • Kruppel-Like Transcription Factors
  • IGFBP5 protein, human
  • Insulin-Like Growth Factor Binding Protein 5

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.82200679, 82002586 and 32270987), Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by CAST (No. 2019QNRC001), Science and Technology Innovation Enhancement Project of Army Medical University (No. 2020XQN02) and the Chongqing International Institute for Immunology (2020YJC09).