Bat-mouse bone marrow chimera: a novel animal model for dissecting the uniqueness of the bat immune system

Yong, Kylie Su Mei; Ng, Justin Han Jia; Her, Zhisheng; Hey, Ying Ying; Tan, Sue Yee; Tan, Wilson Wei Sheng; Irac, Sergio Erdal; Liu, Min; Chan, Xue Ying; Gunawan, Merry; Foo, Randy Jee Hiang; Low, Dolyce Hong Wen; Mendenhall, Ian Hewitt; Chionh, Yok Teng; Dutertre, Charles-Antoine; Chen, Qingfeng; Wang, Lin-Fa

. At 10 weeks post-reconstitution, the percentage of bat chimerism ranged from ~7% to 9% in the peripheral blood of four separate bat-mice in the group (Fig. 1d) . Forty weeks post-transplantation, an increase in reconstitution levels, ranging from ~20% to 40%, was observed, proving long-term reconstitution is viable in the bat-mouse model (Fig. 1e) . Based on the profile of bat immune cells, monocytes made up the largest proportion of cells at ~45% to 50%, followed by B cells at ~20% to ~25%, T/NK cells at ~30% to 32% and DCs at ~0.2-1%, (Fig. 1f) . Taken together, these results indicate that bat BM cells have a long-term repopulating capacity to survive, expand and stably establish a bat immune system in NSG recipients.