Single-Cell Analysis Reveals That CD47 mRNA Expression Correlates with Immune Cell Activation, Antiviral Isgs, and Cytotoxicity.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Immune cells are reported to upregulate CD47 during infection, however, the role of CD47 in innate and adaptive immune cells remains unclear.

METHODS

To bridge this knowledge gap, we analysed our single cell (sc)-RNA dataset along with other publicly available sc-RNA datasets from healthy controls, people with HIV-1 (PWH) and COVID-19 patients. We characterized each immune cell based on low, intermediate, and high expression of .

RESULTS

Our analyses revealed that pDCs and monocytes exhibited relatively higher expression of IFN-α regulatory genes, antiviral interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs) and MHC-I associated genes compared to and cells. Furthermore, NK and CD8+ T cells showed higher expression of antiviral ISGs, as well as genes encoding for cytotoxic markers like granzyme B, perforin, granulysin, interferon gamma and NKG7. Additionally, CD8+ T cells expressed higher levels of PD-1 and LAG-3 genes. Lastly, we found that B cells had enriched expression of genes involved in cell activation and humoral responses.

CONCLUSION

Overall, our analyses revealed that innate and adaptive immune cells expressing elevated activation and functional gene signatures also express higher levels.