Maternal schistosomiasis impairs offspring Interleukin-4 production and B cell expansion
Fig 7
Maternal schistosomiasis induced modulation of B cell cell-cycle and proliferation is dependent on egg antigen exposure.
(A, B) 4get homozygous females were infected with a low dose of S. mansoni cercariae to produce either single-sex infection (verified by anti-SEA ELISA and perfusion of the mother), or mixed-sex patent infection. Offspring born to mothers with either patent (egg exposure), single-sex (adult antigen exposure only), or control uninfected mothers were immunized at 28–35 days of age with commercial alum adjuvanted Tetanus/Diphtheria. At 8 days post-immunization, CD45+live cells were sorted and processed for 10x Genomics single-cell sequencing. Expression levels of genes significantly altered in follicular B cluster 2 and germinal B cell clusters. In these plots, each dot represents a single cell. Normalized expression values were used, and random noise was added to show the distribution of data points. The box plots show interquartile range and the median value (bold horizontal bar). The average expression value per sample is indicated by the dot. Wilcoxon’s test was used for statistical comparisons. (C) Flow cytometry analysis of Ebf-1 and Ki-67 at steady state in CD19+ and plasma B cells. (D) Flow cytometry analysis of Ebf-1 and Ki-67 at day 14 post tetanus/diphtheria immunization. (E) Total number of plasma cells in the popliteal lymph node at steady-state and Day 14 post-tetanus/diphtheria immunization. Statistical analysis for C-E was calculated with Student’s t-test with Welch’s correction.