Hey,
I'm doing an in vivo assay, where I am infecting mice via intra-peritoneal injection and then conducting a peritoneal lavage at defined time points. With this lavage I am looking to count how many phagocytic cells infiltrate the peritoneum. Mainly, I want to distinguish between macrophages, dendritic cells and neutrophils. I've come across a lot of literature with different markers to screen for these cell types. However they also differentiate between different sub-populations. I simply want to distinguish between the three and count the number of cells present in the lavage. Any advice on the best markers to use would be greatly appreciated!
First, what methodology are you going to use for cell counting? If you use flow cytometry you would not need markers to differentiate macrophage neutrophils. Dendritic cells are very rare in fluids and have no specific markers.
The simplest would be a mix of CD11b, CD11c, Ly6G. You could add F4/80 and Ly6C for more clarity. See Supplemental Fig. 2 in the link below for the gating strategy we used.
https://media.nature.com/original/nature-assets/ncomms/2016/160907/ncomms12748/extref/ncomms12748-s1.pdf
I agree with Julie Joseph . You could simply use Ly6G, F4/80, CD11b and CD11c to identify all of these cell types.