Why is location so important for immune cells?
Much like where we choose to live can influence our quality of life, access to resources and even how long we live, a cell’s location can influence its survival and function. This is particularly important in the lymph node, where an immune cell’s location can determine how effectively it responds to a threat, such as a viral infection.
Why did Cells and the Suburbs stand out among all the images and data points you see in your research?
Most of the imaging we do in our lab uses traditional microscopy, while bioinformatics and genetic data can often feel a little less visually exciting. Cells and the Suburbs stood out because it brings these two worlds together.
This striking image is a small section of a much larger map of an entire lymph node. Every cell contains genetic information that tells us something about what kind of cell it is and what it is doing, allowing us to build a detailed map of the cellular neighbourhood.
How did spatial transcriptomics make this image possible?
Spatial transcriptomics allows us to look at the genetic information inside thousands of cells while also keeping track of where those cells are located within a tissue.
Genetic information can tell us a lot about the identity and behaviour of a cell, but when we combine that with its location, we can start to understand how cells interact with the neighbours around them. It becomes more than a map – we can zoom in to decipher the conversations that occur between neighbouring cells.
What might we miss if we looked at these cells individually, instead of seeing the whole neighbourhood?
Like our own social networks, immune cells don’t work alone to fight infections or respond to vaccines. They rely on a collection of different cells working together in a highly coordinated way to produce an effective immune response.
By understanding the neighbours surrounding our memory cells, we can begin to understand why some cells respond more quickly than others and what advantage they gain from being positioned in a particular part of the lymph node.
What impacts do you think your research could have on human health?
Understanding how and where memory immune cells are positioned could help us identify new targets for vaccine design and cancer immunotherapy. By understanding the environments that help these cells survive and function effectively, we may be able to develop strategies that better harness the immune system to provide longer-lasting protection against infection or cancer.
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