scholarly journals Single cell transcriptomics reveals spatial and temporal dynamics of gene expression in the developing mouse spinal cord

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):  
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/.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bushra Raj ◽  
Jeffrey A. Farrell ◽  
Aaron McKenna ◽  
Jessica L. Leslie ◽  
Alexander F. Schier

ABSTRACTNeurogenesis in the vertebrate brain comprises many steps ranging from the proliferation of progenitors to the differentiation and maturation of neurons. Although these processes are highly regulated, the landscape of transcriptional changes and progenitor identities underlying brain development are poorly characterized. Here, we describe the first developmental single-cell RNA-seq catalog of more than 200,000 zebrafish brain cells encompassing 12 stages from 12 hours post-fertilization to 15 days post-fertilization. We characterize known and novel gene markers for more than 800 clusters across these timepoints. Our results capture the temporal dynamics of multiple neurogenic waves from embryo to larva that expand neuronal diversity from ∼20 cell types at 12 hpf to ∼100 cell types at 15 dpf. We find that most embryonic neural progenitor states are transient and transcriptionally distinct from long-lasting neural progenitors of post-embryonic stages. Furthermore, we reconstruct cell specification trajectories for the retina and hypothalamus, and identify gene expression cascades and novel markers. Our analysis reveal that late-stage retinal neural progenitors transcriptionally overlap cell states observed in the embryo, while hypothalamic neural progenitors become progressively distinct with developmental time. These data provide the first comprehensive single-cell transcriptomic time course for vertebrate brain development and suggest distinct neurogenic regulatory paradigms between different stages and tissues.


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/.


Development ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 146 (12) ◽  
pp. dev173807 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julien Delile ◽  
Teresa Rayon ◽  
Manuela Melchionda ◽  
Amelia Edwards ◽  
James Briscoe ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (S3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuanyuan Li ◽  
Ping Luo ◽  
Yi Lu ◽  
Fang-Xiang Wu

Abstract Background With the development of the technology of single-cell sequence, revealing homogeneity and heterogeneity between cells has become a new area of computational systems biology research. However, the clustering of cell types becomes more complex with the mutual penetration between different types of cells and the instability of gene expression. One way of overcoming this problem is to group similar, related single cells together by the means of various clustering analysis methods. Although some methods such as spectral clustering can do well in the identification of cell types, they only consider the similarities between cells and ignore the influence of dissimilarities on clustering results. This methodology may limit the performance of most of the conventional clustering algorithms for the identification of clusters, it needs to develop special methods for high-dimensional sparse categorical data. Results Inspired by the phenomenon that same type cells have similar gene expression patterns, but different types of cells evoke dissimilar gene expression patterns, we improve the existing spectral clustering method for clustering single-cell data that is based on both similarities and dissimilarities between cells. The method first measures the similarity/dissimilarity among cells, then constructs the incidence matrix by fusing similarity matrix with dissimilarity matrix, and, finally, uses the eigenvalues of the incidence matrix to perform dimensionality reduction and employs the K-means algorithm in the low dimensional space to achieve clustering. The proposed improved spectral clustering method is compared with the conventional spectral clustering method in recognizing cell types on several real single-cell RNA-seq datasets. Conclusions In summary, we show that adding intercellular dissimilarity can effectively improve accuracy and achieve robustness and that improved spectral clustering method outperforms the traditional spectral clustering method in grouping cells.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna S. E. Cuomo ◽  
Giordano Alvari ◽  
Christina B. Azodi ◽  
Davis J. McCarthy ◽  
Marc Jan Bonder ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has enabled the unbiased, high-throughput quantification of gene expression specific to cell types and states. With the cost of scRNA-seq decreasing and techniques for sample multiplexing improving, population-scale scRNA-seq, and thus single-cell expression quantitative trait locus (sc-eQTL) mapping, is increasingly feasible. Mapping of sc-eQTL provides additional resolution to study the regulatory role of common genetic variants on gene expression across a plethora of cell types and states and promises to improve our understanding of genetic regulation across tissues in both health and disease. Results While previously established methods for bulk eQTL mapping can, in principle, be applied to sc-eQTL mapping, there are a number of open questions about how best to process scRNA-seq data and adapt bulk methods to optimize sc-eQTL mapping. Here, we evaluate the role of different normalization and aggregation strategies, covariate adjustment techniques, and multiple testing correction methods to establish best practice guidelines. We use both real and simulated datasets across single-cell technologies to systematically assess the impact of these different statistical approaches. Conclusion We provide recommendations for future single-cell eQTL studies that can yield up to twice as many eQTL discoveries as default approaches ported from bulk studies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (Supplement_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Zhong ◽  
Xiangcheng Xiao

Abstract Background and Aims The exact molecular mechanisms underlying IgA nephropathy (IgAN) remains incompletely defined. Therefore, it is necessary to further elucidate the mechanism of IgA nephropathy and find novel therapeutic targets. Method Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) was applied to kidney biopsies from 4 IgAN and 1 control subjects to define the transcriptomic landscape at the single-cell resolution. Unsupervised clustering analysis of kidney specimens was used to identify distinct cell clusters. Differentially expressed genes and potential signaling pathways involved in IgAN were also identified. Results Our analysis identified 14 cell subsets in kidney biopsies from IgAN patients, and analyzed changing gene expression in distinct renal cell types. We found increased mesangial expression of several novel genes including MALAT1, GADD45B, SOX4 and EDIL3, which were related to proliferation and matrix accumulation and have not been reported in IgAN previously. The overexpressed genes in tubule cells of IgAN were mainly enriched in inflammatory pathways including TNF signaling, IL-17 signaling and NOD-like receptor signaling. Moreover, the receptor-ligand crosstalk analysis revealed potential interactions between mesangial cells and other cells in IgAN. Specifically, IgAN with overt proteinuria displayed elevated genes participating in several signaling pathways which may be involved in pathogenesis of progression of IgAN. Conclusion The comprehensive analysis of kidney biopsy specimen demonstrated different gene expression profile, potential pathologic ligand-receptor crosstalk, signaling pathways in human IgAN. These results offer new insight into pathogenesis and identify new therapeutic targets for patients with IgA nephropathy.


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