Most multicellular organisms have a major body cavity that harbors immune cells. In primordial species like purple sea urchins, these cells perform phagocytic functions but are also crucial in repairing injuries. In mammals, the peritoneal cavity contains large numbers of resident GATA6⁺ macrophages, which may play a similar role. It is unclear how cavity macrophages suspended in the fluid phase (peritoneal fluid) identify and migrate towards injuries, however. Here, we show that cavity macrophages in fluid rapidly form thrombus-like structures in response to injury using primordial scavenger receptor (SRCR) domains. Aggregates of cavity macrophages physically sealed injuries and promoted rapid repair of focal lesions. In iatrogenic surgical situations, these cavity macrophages formed extensive aggregates that promoted the growth of intra-abdominal scar tissue termed peritoneal adhesions.

This data package contains a copy of the main data files exactly as used for the figures in this paper. Please refer to the Material and Methods section of our manuscript for a detailed description of how this dataset was collected and processed. In addition to the data shown in our figures, we provide the raw tif files used for the cell tracking and the respective R-Scripts used to visualize these tracking results. Data files are comma-separated values (csv) files except for flow cytometry data which are stored in a multi-sheet Excel file.

Please start by reading the readme.txt file which contains all necessary information to use this data set.