bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.06.447189; this version posted June 7, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Postnatal lymph node expansion of stromal progenitors towards reticular and CD34+ stromal cell subsets is determined by distinct transcriptional programs Joern Pezoldt1,2, Carolin Wiechers1, Maria Litovchenko2, Marjan Biocanin2, Mangge Zou1, Katarzyna Sitnik3, Michael Beckstette1,4, Wanze Chen2, Vincent Gardeux2, Stefan Floess1, Maria Ebel1, Julie Russeil2, Panagiota Arampatzi5, Ehsan Vafardanejad6, Antoine-Emmanuel Saliba6, Bart Deplancke2,#, Jochen Huehn1,7*,# 1Department Experimental Immunology, Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Braunschweig, Germany 2Laboratory of Systems Biology and Genetics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland 3Department of Vaccinology, Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, 38124 Braunschweig, Germany 4Department of Computational Biology for Individualised Medicine, Centre for Individualised Infection Medicine, Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research and Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany 5Core Unit Systems Medicine, University of Wuerzburg, 97080 Wuerzburg, Germany 6Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research, 97080 Wuerzburg, Germany 7Cluster of Excellence RESIST (EXC 2155), Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany #Equally contributing senior authors *Corresponding author: Jochen Huehn (
[email protected]) 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.06.447189; this version posted June 7, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Abstract Gut-draining mesenteric lymph nodes (mLN) provide the framework and microenvironment to shape intestinal adaptive immune responses.