Macrophage calcium reporter mice reveal immune cell communication in vitro and in vivo

Cell communication underlies emergent functions in diverse cell types and tissues. Recent evidence suggests that macrophages are organized in communicating networks, but new tools are needed to quantitatively characterize the resulting cellular conversations. Here, we infer cell communication from spatiotemporal correlations of intracellular calcium dynamics that are non-destructively imaged across cell populations expressing genetically encoded calcium indicators. We describe a hematopoietic calcium reporter mouse (Csf1r(Cre)GCaMP5(fl)) and a computational analysis pipeline for inferring communication between reporter cells based on “excess synchrony.” We observed signals suggestive of cell communication in macrophages treated with immune-stimulatory DNA in vitro and tumor-associated immune cells imaged in a dorsal window chamber model in vivo. Together, the methods described here expand the toolkit for discovery of cell communication events in macrophages and other immune cells.