O'Sullivan LabMar 16, 2023

We have recently found that #NK cell effector function is sexually dimorphic. How? Female NK cells in mice and human express higher levels of the epigenetic regulator #UTX, which escapes X-linked inactivation. UTX regulates the chromatin accessibility of #IFNg and #Csf2, making female NK cells more potent in response to #cytokines and #viral infection.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-023-01463-8

The X-linked epigenetic regulator UTX controls NK cell-intrinsic sex differences - Nature Immunology

Cheng et al. demonstrate that an extra copy of the X-linked epigenetic regulator UTX in females increases natural killer (NK) cell effector function. As NK cells are critical for antiviral immunity, this may explain decreased severity of viral infections in females compared to males.

Nature
Show threadCarolyn KingMar 17, 2023
@osullivanlab this is so cool/important!!! i really look forward to reading it. we are often seeing significant changes when sec disaggregating our data.
Show threadO'Sullivan LabMar 17, 2023
@ImmunologyKing Thank you! I also saw a talk about sexual dimorphism in ILC2 responses, so wouldn't be surprised to see this in ILC3s as well.
Show threadGabriele Pollara

@osullivanlab @ImmunologyKing this is very interesting stuff. Differences in disease susceptibility by gender are one of these hard wired observations in medicine that don't always have an explanation, and yet feel the most concrete phenotypes to try to explain.

From my own research sphere, #TB disease presentation is consistently 2:1 M:F and preventing its manifestation is v v dependent on having enough IFNg...

Mar 17, 2023 at 7:20amWeb
Show threadO'Sullivan LabMar 17, 2023
@gpollara @ImmunologyKing Very interesting!