Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
The Precision Immunology Institute & Department of Oncological Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.
Nat Commun. 2019 Sep 20;10(1):4295. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-12348-6.
Sexual dimorphism in the mammalian immune system is manifested as more frequent and severe infectious diseases in males and, on the other hand, higher rates of autoimmune disease in females, yet insights underlying those differences are still lacking. Here we characterize sex differences in the immune system by RNA and ATAC sequence profiling of untreated and interferon-induced immune cell types in male and female mice. We detect very few differentially expressed genes between male and female immune cells except in macrophages from three different tissues. Accordingly, very few genomic regions display differences in accessibility between sexes. Transcriptional sexual dimorphism in macrophages is mediated by genes of innate immune pathways, and increases after interferon stimulation. Thus, the stronger immune response of females may be due to more activated innate immune pathways prior to pathogen invasion.
哺乳动物免疫系统的性别二态性表现为男性更容易发生频繁且严重的传染病，而女性则更容易患自身免疫性疾病，但这些差异的内在机制仍不清楚。在这里，我们通过对雄性和雌性小鼠未经处理和干扰素诱导的免疫细胞类型进行 RNA 和 ATAC 测序分析，来描述免疫系统的性别差异。我们发现雄性和雌性免疫细胞之间除了来自三种不同组织的巨噬细胞外，很少有差异表达的基因。因此，很少有基因组区域在性别之间存在可及性差异。巨噬细胞中的转录性别二态性由先天免疫途径的基因介导，并且在干扰素刺激后增加。因此，女性更强的免疫反应可能是由于在病原体入侵之前更活跃的先天免疫途径。
