Fig. 3: IL-22⁺ T cells accelerate removal of Cr-laden mature DCCs.

scRNA-seq was performed on epithelial cells from mid–distal colons of C57BL/6 mice without infection (naive) and on day 9 of Cr infection of Il22^hCD4 (control)⁴ and Il22^∆Tcell conditional knockout (cKO) mice (n = 2). a,b, Heat map of top 50 differentially expressed genes in mature DCCs (a) and mature PCCs (b), comparing naive and infected mice. c, Dot plot of IL-22–inducible genes from naive and infected mice. d, UMAP analysis of integrated biological replicates from day 9 of Cr infection of control and Il22^∆Tcell cKO mice. e, Pie charts show the percentage of cells within each IEC subset. Numbers in parentheses show percentages of absorptive (top row), secretory (middle row) and undifferentiated (bottom row) cells in each pool. f, scRNA-seq velocity plots highlight transcriptional relationships between major IEC subsets. Arrowheads denote directionality and lines represent kinetics of differentiation. g, IECs from colons on day 9 of Cr-GFP infection of Il22^hCD4 and Il22^∆Tcell mice were stained for LY6G, CD45, L/D dye and EPCAM1 and analysed by flow cytometry. h, Number of Cr-GFP^–LY6G⁺ IECs and Cr-GFP⁺LY6G⁺ IECs from Il22^hCD4 (white) and Il22^∆Tcell (grey) mice on day 9 of infection with Cr-GFP. Two-tailed unpaired t-test; 3 or 4 mice per group; n = 2 independent experiments. Data are mean ± s.e.m. *P ≤ 0.05.