How does the ability to do phagocytosis of a new cell population compare to other dendritic cells?
The intestines are home to immune system cells whose role is to monitor the microbiota within the gut; one group of these cells being dendritic cells. Recently, a population of dendritic cells that are CD14+, a marker that was associated with macrophages, were found in the colon. The role of these CD14+ DCs in the colon and their ability to do phagocytosis is unknown. We hypothesize that that these novel CD14+ DCs will be better at phagocytosis compared to other DCs. We extracted cells from the colon and incubated them with a pseudopathogen with a colored marker under multiple different conditions. Afterwards the cells were stained with antibodies and analyzed using a flow cytometer. Under multiple conditions, we found a higher median fluorescence for the novel DCs when compared to the other DCs in the colon. At the same time, the novel DCs did not have a median fluorescence intensity as high as the macrophages. Our data suggests that the novels DCs have an increased ability to perform phagocytosis compared to other DCs but not at the level of the macrophages.
