Scientists map human immune cells across organs, revealing tissue-specific responses
Researchers created the first comprehensive atlas of how B cells—crucial immune fighters—differ between tissues rather than circulating in blood alone. The findings could reshape vaccine design, immunotherapy development, and treatment strategies for infections and autoimmune diseases by showing how local immune environments fundamentally alter cell behavior.
Originaltitel: High-resolution single-cell atlas of the human B cell compartment and immune microenvironment across tissues
Abstract The immune system is a dynamic network of diverse cell types distributed across tissues. While mouse studies have highlighted the importance of tissue-localized B-cell responses in infection and tissue repair, research on human B cells has remained largely confined to peripheral blood. Here, we specifically investigated the human B-cell compartment and its interactions with the immune microenvironment across 10 tissues, using single-cell RNA sequencing and paired B-cell receptor sequencing. We mapped the full spectrum of B-cell populations and revealed diverse differentiation trajectories spanning naive, memory, and plasma cell types. Germinal center B cells and plasma cells showed tissue-specific adaptations in transcriptional states, isotype usage, and functional profiles. Plasma cell isotypes influenced both effector functions and predicted interactions with T cells. Finally, we defined tissue-specific residency gene modules that outperformed existing memory B-cell signatures. Together, this dataset serves as a foundation for systematically studying tissue-localized B cells and reveals how local microenvironments shape humoral immunity.