Fig. 3: Eosinophils program stem cells to induce goblet cell fate.
From: Eosinophils drive intestinal remodelling and innate defence in reproduction
a,b, Timed-pregnant dams were injected with isotype or anti-CCR3 antibodies. a, Left, representative images of villus-resident UEA1+ goblet cells (indicated by white arrowheads) from lactating mice. Scale bars, 70 μm. Right, average count of goblet cells per villus in the proximal small intestine of control mice (n = 3) and mice given the isotype (n = 6) or anti-CCR3 (n = 5) antibody. b, Left, representative images of organoids derived from single LGR5+ intestinal stem cells. Scale bars, 50 μm. Right, average counts of UEA1+ goblet cells in organoid culture from control (n = 3) mice and mice given the isotype (n = 4) or anti-CCR3 (n = 3) antibody. c, Average count of UEA1+ goblet cells per villus in the proximal small intestine (n = 3). d–j, Xenium analysis of the first 10 cm of the proximal small intestine. d, Representative views of cell segmentation and annotation along the crypt–villus structure. Scale bars, 100 μm. NK cell, natural killer cell. e, Absolute number of stem cells, goblet cells and enterocytes detected in samples (n = 4). f,g, Mean kernel density of cell counts along the proximal–distal intestinal length, with shaded s.d. in each condition for goblet cells (f) and eosinophils (g). h, Differentially overexpressed genes that are increased in eosinophils in lactating mice compared with control mice. i, Gene expression (z-scored) within eosinophil subclusters. j, Left, mean kernel density of eosinophil subsets across the normalized crypt–villus longitude, with s.d. indicated. Right, representative views of eosinophil subsets along the crypt–villus structure. Scale bars, 100 μm. For a–c, data are pooled or representative of at least two independent experiments. Each dot represents an individual mouse. For d–j, n = 4 biological replicates pooled from two independent experiments. Error bars represent the mean ± s.d. Significance was calculated using one-way ANOVA (a,b), two-way ANOVA (c) or two-tailed unpaired Student’s t-test (e). *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001, NS, not significant. Icons in a created in BioRender; Huang, C. https://BioRender.com/pmrvxbl (2026).
