Project description:Microglia play vital roles in the emergence and preservation of a healthy brain microenvironment with their impaired functions highlighted in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. However, investigating the microglia function in health and disease states has been challenging due to the lack of easily accessible human models. Here, we develop a method to generate functional microglia inside human cortical organoids (hCOs) from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and apply this system to dissect the role of microglia under inflammation induced by amyloid- (A). The overexpression of the myeloid-specific transcription factor PU.1 generated microglia-like cells in hCOs, producing mhCOs (microglia-containing hCOs) and engrafted in the mouse brain. Single-cell transcriptomics reveals that mhCOs acquire a microglia cell cluster with an intact complement/chemokine system. Functionally, microglia in mhCOs protect parenchyma from cellular and molecular damage caused by A. A-induced expression of genes associated with apoptosis, ferroptosis, and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) stage III genes was attenuated in mhCOs. Finally, we determined the function of AD-associated genes highly expressed in microglia in response to A by using pooled CRISPRi coupled with single-cell RNA sequencing in mhCOs. Together, mhCOs represent an innovative platform to investigate neurodegenerative disorders and serve to develop therapeutics in the future.
Project description:Microglia play vital roles in the emergence and preservation of a healthy brain microenvironment with their impaired functions highlighted in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. However, investigating the microglia function in health and disease states has been challenging due to the lack of easily accessible human models. Here, we develop a method to generate functional microglia inside human cortical organoids (hCOs) from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and apply this system to dissect the role of microglia under inflammation induced by amyloid- (A). The overexpression of the myeloid-specific transcription factor PU.1 generated microglia-like cells in hCOs, producing mhCOs (microglia-containing hCOs) and engrafted in the mouse brain. Single-cell transcriptomics reveals that mhCOs acquire a microglia cell cluster with an intact complement/chemokine system. Functionally, microglia in mhCOs protect parenchyma from cellular and molecular damage caused by A. A-induced expression of genes associated with apoptosis, ferroptosis, and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) stage III genes was attenuated in mhCOs. Finally, we determined the function of AD-associated genes highly expressed in microglia in response to A by using pooled CRISPRi coupled with single-cell RNA sequencing in mhCOs. Together, mhCOs represent an innovative platform to investigate neurodegenerative disorders and serve to develop therapeutics in the future.
Project description:We generated cortical organoids from four FCD patients. To generate cortical organoids, we used induced pluriplotent stem cells (iPSCs) obtained from skin biopsy from these FCD selected patients and healthy controls. We extrated RNA samples from the cortical organoids to do customized panel of gene expression. Gene expression using NanoString Human Neuropathology Panel from four FCD patients and four controls
Project description:Natural selection has shaped the gene regulatory networks that orchestrate the development of the neocortex, leading to diverse neocortical structure and function across mammals, but the molecular and cellular mechanisms driving phenotypic changes have proven difficult to characterize. Here, we develop a reproducible protocol to generate cortical organoids from mouse epiblast stem cells that enable in depth mechanistic studies of cortical developmental in vitro. Cortical organoids develop with similar kinetics to the mouse cortex in vivo, recapitulate the cellular diversity present in the embryonic neocortex, and undergo relatively rapid maturation compared to human organoids. We generated cortical organoids from F1 hybrid epiblast stem cell lines from crosses between standard laboratory mice (C57Bl/6J) and four wild-derived inbred mouse strains from distinct sub-species that span ~1 million years of evolutionary divergence. Using scRNA-seq and allele-specific expression analysis we identified hundreds of genes that exhibit differential cis-regulation during cortical neurogenesis. These experimental methods and cellular resources represent a powerful new platform for investigating gene regulatory mechanisms across evolutionary timescales.