Immune cells called T cells help the body to fight off infection.Credit: Dennis Kunkel Microscopy/SPL
A cellular atlas that characterizes the functions of immune cells in more than 400 Chinese individuals has revealed key differences in the biology of people from different populations.
The study, published today in Science1, compiles a ‘multi-omic’ atlas of immune cells in the blood. It draws together data on genes, proteins, RNA and the epigenome to study how this group of cells works. Dubbed the Chinese Immune Multi-Omics Atlas (CIMA), the atlas finds important variation in immune-cell functions compared with those charted in similar data sets from European and Japanese cohorts.
“By providing a data set that complements other Asian cohorts like the Japanese ImmuNexUT project, we have created a resource that allows for the discovery of biological mechanisms and genetic associations that would likely be missed in European-centric studies,” write the authors in a joint statement to Nature.
Diverse data sets
Researchers have created multi-omic atlases for several cell types, using them to tackle specific questions relating to the brain, Alzheimer’s disease and the immune system. But these atlases often rely mainly on data from people of European origin. This means that medicines designed on the basis of cell characteristics in these atlases might not be effective in individuals who have other ancestries.
Cellular atlases are unlocking the mysteries of the human body
To address this gap, Jianhua Yin at the Shanxi Medical University–BGI Collaborative Center for Future Medicine in Taiyuan, China, and his colleagues analysed more than 10 million immune cells in blood samples from 428 healthy Chinese adults at multi-omics levels.
The atlas provides biomolecular indicators for each individual, including metabolite profiles, blood biochemical markers, chromatin accessibility data and differences in gene expression across cell populations.
The researchers compared their data set to results from the OneK1K project, which analysed people with northern European ancestry2 , and the Japanese ImmuNexUT project3. They found that core immune pathways and cell types are the same in the different populations.
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