Center for Evolutionary & Theoretical Immunology, Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
Human Immunology Section, Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
Dev Comp Immunol. 2024 May;154:105149. doi: 10.1016/j.dci.2024.105149. Epub 2024 Feb 8.
Olfactory receptors (OR), expressed on olfactory neurons, mediate the sense of smell. Recently, OR have also been shown to be expressed in non-olfactory tissues, including cells of the immune system. An analysis of single-cell transcriptomes of splenocytes of the grey short-tailed opossum (Monodelphis domestica) found OR are expressed on a subset of T cells, the γμ T cells, that are unique to marsupials and monotremes. A majority of opossum γμ T cells transcriptomes contain OR family 14 transcripts, specifically, from the OR14C subfamily. Amongst the mammals, the OR14 gene family is expanded in the genomes of marsupials and monotremes, and rarer or absent in placental mammals. In summary, here we demonstrate the intriguing correlation that a family of OR genes, abundant in the genomes of marsupials and monotremes, are ectopically expressed in a particular subset of T cells unique to the marsupials and monotremes.
嗅觉受体 (OR) 表达在嗅觉神经元上，介导嗅觉。最近，OR 也被发现在非嗅觉组织中表达，包括免疫系统的细胞。对灰短尾负鼠 (Monodelphis domestica) 脾细胞的单细胞转录组分析发现，OR 表达在 T 细胞的一个亚群上，即γμ T 细胞，这是有袋动物和单孔目动物所特有的。大多数负鼠 γμ T 细胞的转录组包含 OR 家族 14 的转录本，特别是 OR14C 亚家族。在哺乳动物中，OR14 基因家族在有袋动物和单孔目动物的基因组中扩张，而在胎盘哺乳动物中则较少或不存在。总之，在这里，我们证明了一个有趣的相关性，即在有袋动物和单孔目动物的基因组中丰富的 OR 基因家族，在外周组织中异常表达在有袋动物和单孔目动物所特有的一个特定的 T 细胞亚群上。
