Innate immune system favors emergency monopoiesis at the expense of DC-differentiation to control systemic bacterial infection in mice.

DCs are professional APCs playing a crucial role in the initiation of T-cell responses to combat infection. However, systemic bacterial infection with various pathogens leads to DC-depletion in humans and mice. The mechanisms of pathogen-induced DC-depletion remain poorly understood. Previously, we showed that mice infected with Yersinia enterocolitica (Ye) had impaired de novo DC-development, one reason for DC-depletion. Here, we extend these studies to gain insight into the molecular mechanisms of DC-depletion and the impact of different bacteria on DC-development. We show that the number of bone marrow (BM) hematopoietic progenitors committed to the DC lineage is reduced following systemic infection with different Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. This is associated with a TLR4- and IFN-γ-signaling dependent increase of committed monocyte progenitors in the BM and mature monocytes in the spleen upon Ye-infection. Adoptive transfer experiments revealed that infection-induced monopoiesis occurs at the expense of DC-development. Our data provide evidence for a general response of hematopoietic progenitors upon systemic bacterial infections to enhance monocyte production, thereby increasing the availability of innate immune cells for pathogen control, whereas impaired DC-development leads to DC-depletion, possibly driving transient immunosuppression in bacterial sepsis.

Interactions between Cdx genes and retinoic acid modulate early cardiogenesis.

Cdx transcription factors regulate embryonic positional identities and have crucial roles in anteroposterior patterning (AP) processes of all three germ layers. Previously we have shown that the zebrafish homologues cdx1a and cdx4 redundantly regulate posterior mesodermal derivatives inducing embryonic blood cell fate specification and patterning of the embryonic kidney. Here we hypothesize that cdx factors restrict formation of anterior mesodermal derivatives such as cardiac cells by imposing posterior identity to developing mesodermal cells. We show that ectopic expression of Cdx1 or Cdx4 applied during the brief window of mesoderm patterning in differentiating murine embryonic stem cell (ESC) strongly suppresses cardiac development as assayed by expression of cardiac genes and formation of embryoid bodies (EB) containing "beating" cell clusters. Conversely, in loss-of-function studies performed in cdx-deficient zebrafish embryos, we observed a dose-dependent expansion of tbx5a(+) anterior-lateral plate mesoderm giving rise to cardiac progenitors. However, further cardiac development of these mesodermal cells required additional suppression of the retinoic acid (RA) pathway, possibly due to differential activity of inhibitory RA signals in cdx mutants. Together, our data suggest that cdx proteins affect cardiogenesis by regulating the formation of cardiogenic mesoderm and together with the RA pathway control the early development of cardiac precursor cells.

Hematopoietic development from human induced pluripotent stem cells.

A decade of research on human embryonic stem cells (ESC) has paved the way for the discovery of alternative approaches to generating pluripotent stem cells. Combinatorial overexpression of a limited number of proteins linked to pluripotency in ESC was recently found to reprogram differentiated somatic cells back to a pluripotent state, enabling the derivation of isogenic (patient-specific) pluripotent stem cell lines. Current research is focusing on improving reprogramming protocols (e.g., circumventing the use of retroviral technology and oncoproteins), and on methods for differentiation into transplantable tissues of interest. In mouse ESC, we have previously shown that the embryonic morphogens BMP4 and Wnt3a direct blood formation via activation of Cdx and Hox genes. Ectopic expression of Cdx4 and HoxB4 enables the generation of mouse ESC-derived hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) capable of multilineage reconstitution of lethally irradiated adult mice. Here, we explore hematopoietic development from human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells generated in our laboratory. Our data show robust differentiation of iPS cells to mesoderm and to blood lineages, as shown by generation of CD34(+)CD45(+) cells, hematopoietic colony activity, and gene expression data, and suggest conservation of blood patterning pathways between mouse and human hematopoietic development.