Fig. 1: Deep cell atlas of the human lung reveals the presence of ionocytes in both human proximal and distal airways and proximal and distal ALI cultures.

A Regional sampling for a deep lung cell atlas. Numbered circles represent sampled locations. B Lung cell atlas. Uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) embedding of cell profiles (dots) from the large airways (left) and lung lobe regions (right) colored by cell type annotation. C–F Epithelial lung and ALI cell profiles. UMAP embeddings of epithelial cell profiles from the proximal airway (C), distal lung lobe (D), and ALI cultures generated from large airway basal cells isolated from primary bronchus (E) or from small airway basal cells isolated from microdissected small airway less than 2 mm in diameter (F). G–I Ionocyte abundance in the human proximal and distal airways and human proximal and distal ALI cultures. G Number of BSND+ mature ionocytes per ALI (y axis) in Large ALI and Small ALI cultures (x axis). n = 3 ALIs averaged from 3 separate donors, Two tailed unpaired T test. Error bars are standard deviation. H Whole mount images of dissected large (left) and small (right) airways stained for BSND (magenta) and acetylated Tubulin (green). Insets: Representative examples of BSND+ ionocytes (magenta). I Number of BSND+ mature ionocytes per mm2 (y axis) in microdissected large airways and small airways (x axis). n = 26 for large airways and 33 for small airways across three normal human lungs (Hu66, Hu67, and Hu68). One way ANOVA (Sidak’s multiple comparisons). Error bars are standard deviation. Elements of 1 A was created with BioRender https://BioRender.com/0ruztco.