scholarly journals Single cell transcriptome profiling of the human developing spinal cord reveals a conserved genetic programme with human specific features

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Rayon ◽  
Rory J. Maizels ◽  
Christopher Barrington ◽  
James Briscoe

AbstractThe spinal cord receives input from peripheral sensory neurons and controls motor output by regulating muscle innervating motor neurons. These functions are carried out by neural circuits comprising molecularly and physiologically distinct neuronal subtypes that are generated in a characteristic spatial-temporal arrangement from progenitors in the embryonic neural tube. The systematic mapping of gene expression in mouse embryos has provided insight into the diversity and complexity of cells in the neural tube. For human embryos, however, less information has been available. To address this, we used single cell mRNA sequencing to profile cervical and thoracic regions in four human embryos of Carnegie Stages (CS) CS12, CS14, CS17 and CS19 from Gestational Weeks (W) 4-7. In total we recovered the transcriptomes of 71,219 cells. Analysis of progenitor and neuronal populations from the neural tube, as well as cells of the peripheral nervous system, in dorsal root ganglia adjacent to the neural tube, identified dozens of distinct cell types and facilitated the reconstruction of the differentiation pathways of specific neuronal subtypes. Comparison with existing mouse datasets revealed the overall similarity of mouse and human neural tube development while highlighting specific features that differed between species. These data provide a catalogue of gene expression and cell type identity in the developing neural tube that will support future studies of sensory and motor control systems and can be explored at https://shiny.crick.ac.uk/scviewer/neuraltube/.

Development ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Rayon ◽  
Rory J. Maizels ◽  
Christopher Barrington ◽  
James Briscoe

The spinal cord receives input from peripheral sensory neurons and controls motor output by regulating muscle innervating motor neurons. These functions are carried out by neural circuits comprising molecularly distinct neuronal subtypes generated in a characteristic spatial-temporal arrangement from progenitors in the embryonic neural tube. To gain insight into the diversity and complexity of cells in the developing human neural tube we used single cell mRNA sequencing to profile cervical and thoracic regions in four human embryos of Carnegie Stages (CS) CS12, CS14, CS17 and CS19 from Gestational Weeks 4-7. Analysis of progenitor and neuronal populations from the neural tube and dorsal root ganglia identified dozens of distinct cell types and facilitated the reconstruction of the differentiation pathways of specific neuronal subtypes. Comparison with mouse revealed the overall similarity of mammalian neural tube development while highlighting human specific features. These data provide a catalogue of gene expression and cell type identity in the human neural tube that will support future studies of sensory and motor control systems. The data can be explored at https://shiny.crick.ac.uk/scviewer/neuraltube/.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julien Delile ◽  
Teresa Rayon ◽  
Manuela Melchionda ◽  
Amelia Edwards ◽  
James Briscoe ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTThe coordinated spatial and temporal regulation of gene expression in the vertebrate neural tube determines the identity of neural progenitors and the function and physiology of the neurons they generate. Progress has been made deciphering the gene regulatory programmes responsible for this process, however, the complexity of the tissue has hampered the systematic analysis of the network and the underlying mechanisms. To address this, we used single cell mRNA sequencing to profile cervical and thoracic regions of the developing mouse neural tube between embryonic days (e)9.5-e13.5. We confirmed the data accurately recapitulates neural tube development, allowing us to identify new markers for specific progenitor and neuronal populations. In addition, the analysis highlighted a previously underappreciated temporal component to the mechanisms generating neuronal diversity and revealed common features in the sequence of transcriptional events that lead to the differentiation of specific neuronal subtypes. Together the data provide a compendium of gene expression for classifying spinal cord cell types that will support future studies of neural tube development, function, and disease.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samudyata ◽  
Ana Osorio Oliveira ◽  
Susmita Malwade ◽  
Nuno Rufino de Sousa ◽  
Sravan K Goparaju ◽  
...  

Neuropsychiatric manifestations are common in both acute and post-acute phase of SARS-CoV-2 infection, but the mechanism of these effects is unknown. Here, we derive human brain organoids with innately developing microglia to investigate the cellular responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection on a single cell level. We find evidence of limited tropism to SARS-CoV-2 for all major cell types and observe extensive neuronal cell death that also include non-infected cells. Single cell transcriptome profiling reveals distinct responses in microglia and astrocytes that share features with cellular states observed in neurodegenerative diseases, includes upregulation of genes with relevance for synaptic stripping, and suggests altered blood brain barrier integrity. Across all cell types, we observe a global translational shut-down as well as altered carbohydrate metabolism and cellular respiration. Together, our findings provide insights into cellular responses of the resident brain immune cells to SARS-CoV-2 and pinpoint mechanisms that may be of relevance for the neuropathological changes observed in COVID-19 patients.


Cell Reports ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (7) ◽  
pp. 2241-2247.e4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine N. Shulse ◽  
Benjamin J. Cole ◽  
Doina Ciobanu ◽  
Junyan Lin ◽  
Yuko Yoshinaga ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan R. Farnsworth ◽  
Lauren Saunders ◽  
Adam C. Miller

ABSTRACTThe ability to define cell types and how they change during organogenesis is central to our understanding of animal development and human disease. Despite the crucial nature of this knowledge, we have yet to fully characterize all distinct cell types and the gene expression differences that generate cell types during development. To address this knowledge gap, we produced an Atlas using single-cell RNA-sequencing methods to investigate gene expression from the pharyngula to early larval stages in developing zebrafish. Our single-cell transcriptome Atlas encompasses transcriptional profiles from 44,102 cells across four days of development using duplicate experiments that confirmed high reproducibility. We annotated 220 identified clusters and highlighted several strategies for interrogating changes in gene expression associated with the development of zebrafish embryos at single-cell resolution. Furthermore, we highlight the power of this analysis to assign new cell-type or developmental stage-specific expression information to many genes, including those that are currently known only by sequence and/or that lack expression information altogether. The resulting Atlas is a resource of biologists to generate hypotheses for genetic (mutant) or functional analysis, to launch an effort to define the diversity of cell-types during zebrafish organogenesis, and to examine the transcriptional profiles that produce each cell type over developmental time.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bilge E. Öztürk ◽  
Molly E. Johnson ◽  
Michael Kleyman ◽  
Serhan Turunç ◽  
Jing He ◽  
...  

AbstractAdeno-associated virus (AAV)-mediated gene therapies are rapidly advancing to the clinic, and AAV engineering has resulted in vectors with increased ability to deliver therapeutic genes. Although the choice of vector is critical, quantitative comparison of AAVs, especially in large animals, remains challenging. Here, we developed an efficient single-cell AAV engineering pipeline (scAAVengr) to quantify efficiency of AAV-mediated gene expression across all cell types. scAAVengr allows for definitive, head-to-head comparison of vectors in the same animal. To demonstrate proof-of-concept for the scAAVengr workflow, we quantified – with cell-type resolution – the abilities of naturally occurring and newly engineered AAVs to mediate gene expression in primate retina following intravitreal injection. A top performing variant, K912, was used to deliver SaCas9 and edit the rhodopsin gene in macaque retina, resulting in editing efficiency similar to infection rates detected by the scAAVengr workflow. These results validate scAAVengr as a powerful method for development of AAV vectors.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenyuan Yu ◽  
Wenhao Lu ◽  
Cheng Su ◽  
Yufang Lv ◽  
Yu Ye ◽  
...  

Bilateral renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is a rare disease that can be classified as either familial or sporadic. Studying the cellular molecular characteristics of sporadic bilateral RCC is important to provide guidance for clinical treatment. Cellular molecular characteristics can be expressed at the RNA level, especially at the single-cell degree. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) was performed on bilateral clear cell RCC (ccRCC). A total of 3,575 and 3,568 high-quality single-cell transcriptome data were captured from the left and right tumour tissues, respectively. Gene characteristics were identified by comparing left and right tumours at the scRNA level. The complex cellular environment of bilateral ccRCC was presented by using scRNA-seq. Single-cell transcriptomic analysis revealed high similarity in gene expression among most of the cell types of bilateral RCCs but significant differences in gene expression among different site tumour cells. Additionally, the potential biological function of different tumour cell types was determined by gene ontology (GO) analysis. The transcriptome characteristics of tumour tissues in different locations at the single-cell transcriptome level were revealed through the scRNA-seq of bilateral sporadic ccRCC. This work provides new insights into the diagnosis and treatment of bilateral RCC.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. e0243360
Author(s):  
Johan Gustafsson ◽  
Jonathan Robinson ◽  
Juan S. Inda-Díaz ◽  
Elias Björnson ◽  
Rebecka Jörnsten ◽  
...  

Single-cell RNA sequencing has become a valuable tool for investigating cell types in complex tissues, where clustering of cells enables the identification and comparison of cell populations. Although many studies have sought to develop and compare different clustering approaches, a deeper investigation into the properties of the resulting populations is lacking. Specifically, the presence of misclassified cells can influence downstream analyses, highlighting the need to assess subpopulation purity and to detect such cells. We developed DSAVE (Down-SAmpling based Variation Estimation), a method to evaluate the purity of single-cell transcriptome clusters and to identify misclassified cells. The method utilizes down-sampling to eliminate differences in sampling noise and uses a log-likelihood based metric to help identify misclassified cells. In addition, DSAVE estimates the number of cells needed in a population to achieve a stable average gene expression profile within a certain gene expression range. We show that DSAVE can be used to find potentially misclassified cells that are not detectable by similar tools and reveal the cause of their divergence from the other cells, such as differing cell state or cell type. With the growing use of single-cell RNA-seq, we foresee that DSAVE will be an increasingly useful tool for comparing and purifying subpopulations in single-cell RNA-Seq datasets.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine N. Shulse ◽  
Benjamin J. Cole ◽  
Gina M. Turco ◽  
Yiwen Zhu ◽  
Siobhan M. Brady ◽  
...  

AbstractSingle-cell transcriptome analysis of heterogeneous tissues can provide high-resolution windows into the genomic basis and spatiotemporal dynamics of developmental processes. Here we demonstrate the feasibility of high-throughput single-cell RNA sequencing of plant tissue using the Drop-seq approach. Profiling of >4,000 individual cells from the Arabidopsis root provides transcriptomes and marker genes for a diversity of cell types and illuminates the gene expression changes that occur across endodermis development.


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