Fig. 2: Maternal asthma enhances lung ILC2s in adult offspring.

a Changes in the number of cytokine-producing ILC2s in the lungs of adult offspring of asthmatic or control mothers. ILC2s were stimulated with PMA/ionomycin for 4 h, and cytokine production was evaluated using intracellular staining. b Lung ILC2s were sorted from adult offspring of asthmatic or control mothers and cultured in the presence of IL-33 for 3 days. IL-5 and IL-13 levels in the culture supernatants of sorted lung ILC2s were measured by ELISA. c Lung ILC2s were sorted from adult offspring of asthmatic or control mothers and transplanted intravenously to Il7r-deficient mice. One day after transplantation, IL-33 was administered intranasally to recipient mice. Flow cytometric analysis of the lungs of recipient mice transplanted with sorted lung ILC2s. In (a–c), data were pooled from three independent experiments (a), each experiment with one or two pregnant dams, or representative of two independent experiments (b), each experiment with one pregnant dam per group, or pooled from two independent experiments (c) with one pregnant dam per group. Sample sizes were as follows: a PBS-PBS: n = 6, OVA-PBS: n = 6, PBS-HDM: n = 19, OVA-HDM: n = 19; b PBS: n = 3, OVA: n = 3; c PBS: n = 5, OVA: n = 4. In (a, c), each dot represents an individual mouse. In (b), each dot represents an individual well from an in vitro experiment, with cells sorted and pooled from PBS (n = 4) and OVA (n = 4) groups of mice. In (a–c), data are presented as the mean ± SEM. *p < 0.05; ns, not significant [unpaired two-tailed Student’s t-test].