Figure 1

Promoter SNP rs7071836 influences Treg expression of CD39. (A) Illustrative example of the ‘CD39hi’ and ‘CD39lo’ Treg phenotypes. Intracellular staining of the Treg-associated transcription factor FoxP3 vs. cell surface expression of CD39 is shown for the CD45RO + CD4+ T cell compartment in two separate individuals of Chinese ethnicity. (B) Frequency of the ‘CD39lo’ Treg phenotype correlated with the frequency of the rs7071836-AA genotype (calculated using samples from HapMap3 release #27). (C) Genotype/phenotype association in a cohort of Chinese ethnicity (n = 165) showing CD39 expression in subsets of peripheral blood Treg, CD4+ effector T cells, B cells and monocytes. Significance was evaluated by Kruskal-Wallis test. Gating of the different cell populations is shown in Additional file 1: Figure S1.