TY - JOUR AU - Yang, Li AU - Shivakumar, Pranavkumar AU - Kinder, Jeremy AU - Way, Sing Sing AU - Donnelly, Bryan AU - Mourya, Reena AU - Luo, Zhenhua AU - Bezerra, Jorge A. T1 - Regulation of bile duct epithelial injury by hepatic CD71+ erythroid cells PY - 2020/06/04/ AB - Extramedullary hematopoietic cells are present in the liver of normal neonates in the first few days of life and persist in infants with biliary atresia. Based on a previous report that liver genes are enriched by erythroid pathways, we examined the liver gene expression pattern at diagnosis and found the top 5 enriched pathways are related to erythrocyte pathobiology in children who survived with the native liver beyond 2 years of age. Using immunostaining, anti-CD71 antibodies identified CD71+ erythroid cells among extramedullary hematopoietic cells in the livers at the time of diagnosis. In mechanistic experiments, the preemptive antibody depletion of hepatic CD71+ erythroid cells in neonatal mice rendered them resistant to rhesus rotavirus–induced (RRV-induced) biliary atresia. The depletion of CD71+ erythroid cells increased the number of effector lymphocytes and delayed the RRV infection of livers and extrahepatic bile ducts. In coculture experiments, CD71+ erythroid cells suppressed the activation of hepatic mononuclear cells. These data uncover an immunoregulatory role for CD71+ erythroid cells in the neonatal liver. JF - JCI Insight JA - JCI Insight SN - 2379-3708 DO - 10.1172/jci.insight.135751 VL - 5 IS - 11 UR - https://doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.135751 PB - The American Society for Clinical Investigation ER -