Project description:The cardiac autonomic nervous system is crucial in controlling cardiac function, such as heart rate and cardiac contractility, and is divided into sympathetic and parasympathetic branches. Normally, there is a balance between these two branches to maintain homeostasis. However, cardiac disease states such as myocardial infarction, heart failure, and hypertension can induce the remodeling of cells involved in cardiac innervation, which is associated with an adverse clinical outcome. Although there are vast amounts of data for the histological structure and function of the cardiac autonomic nervous system, its molecular biological architecture in health and disease is still enigmatic in many aspects. Novel technologies such as single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) hold promise for the genetic characterization of tissues at single-cell resolution. However, the relatively large size of neurons may impede the standardized use of these techniques. Here, this protocol exploits droplet-based single-nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq), a method to characterize the biological architecture of cardiac sympathetic neurons in health and disease. A stepwise approach is demonstrated to perform snRNA-seq of the bilateral superior cervical (SCG) and stellate ganglia (StG) dissected from adult mice. This method enables long-term sample preservation, maintaining an adequate RNA quality when samples from multiple individuals/experiments cannot be collected all at once within a short period of time. Barcoding the nuclei with hashtag oligos (HTOs) enables demultiplexing and the trace-back of distinct ganglionic samples post sequencing. Subsequent analyses revealed successful nuclei capture of neuronal, satellite glial, and endothelial cells of the sympathetic ganglia, as validated by snRNA-seq. In summary, this protocol provides a stepwise approach for snRNA-seq of sympathetic extrinsic cardiac ganglia, a method that has the potential for broader application in studies of the innervation of other organs and tissues.
Project description:Single-nucleus RNA-seq (snRNA-seq) enables the interrogation of cellular states in complex tissues that are challenging to dissociate or are frozen, and opens the way to human genetics studies, clinical trials, and precise cell atlases of large organs. However, such applications are currently limited by batch effects, processing, and costs. Here, we present an approach for multiplexing snRNA-seq, using sample-barcoded antibodies to uniquely label nuclei from distinct samples. Comparing human brain cortex samples profiled with or without hashing antibodies, we demonstrate that nucleus hashing does not significantly alter recovered profiles. We develop DemuxEM, a computational tool that detects inter-sample multiplets and assigns singlets to their sample of origin, and validate its accuracy using sex-specific gene expression, species-mixing and natural genetic variation. Our approach will facilitate tissue atlases of isogenic model organisms or from multiple biopsies or longitudinal samples of one donor, and large-scale perturbation screens.
Project description:Transcriptom analysis of stellate sympathetic ganglia after 8 weeks of cardiac pressure overload caused by transverse aortic constriction. Comparative transcriptome analysis was determined using the GeneChip Mouse Genome 430 2.0 Array (Affymetrix, Santa Clara, CA, USA). Six microarrays from stellate sympathetic ganglia of mice were performed 8 weeks after transverse aortic constriction or sham operation.
Project description:Satellite glia are the major glial type found in ganglia of the peripheral nervous system that wrap around cell bodies of sympathetic and sensory neurons that are very diverse. Other than their close physical association with peripheral neurons, little is known about this glial population. Here, we performed single cell RNA sequencing analysis and identified five different populations of satellite glia from sympathetic and sensory ganglia. We identify three shared populations of satellite glia enriched in immune-response genes, immediate-early genes and ion channels/ECM-interactors, respectively. Sensory- and sympathetic-specific satellite glia are differentially enriched for modulators of lipid metabolism. Sensory glia are also specifically enriched for genes involved in glutamate turnover. Further, satellite glia and Schwann cells can be distinguished by unique transcriptional signatures. This study reveals remarkable heterogeneity of satellite glia in the peripheral nervous system.
Project description:Embryonic malignant transformation is concomitant to organogenesis, often affecting multipotent and migratory progenitors. Neuroblastoma (NB) is an emblematic example, arising from neural crest progenitors and characterized by a high heterogeneity and a widely disseminated clinical presentation. Metastatic triggers from the embryonic environment are suspected but yet unknown due to limited investigation access in patients and current models. Using combinations of ex vivo and in vivo models mimicking the embryonic context coupled to proteomic and transcriptomic analyses, we identify Olfactomedin1 (OLFM1) released by sympathetic derivatives at the core of a gene program promoting NB cells decohesion, primary tumor escape and dissemination.
Project description:Transcriptom analysis of stellate sympathetic ganglia after 8 weeks of cardiac pressure overload caused by transverse aortic constriction.
2010-02-03 | GSE18004 | GEO
Project description:Nuclei multiplexing with barcoded antibodies for single-nucleus genomics
Project description:High-throughput single-cell assays increasingly require special consideration in experimental design, sample multiplexing, batch effect removal, and data interpretation. Here, we describe a lentiviral barcode-based multiplexing approach, CellTag Indexing, which uses predefined genetic barcodes that are also heritable, enabling cell populations to be tagged, pooled, and tracked over time in the same experimental replicate. We demonstrate the utility of CellTag Indexing by sequencing transcriptomes using a variety of cell types, including long-term tracking of cell engraftment and differentiation in vivo. Together, this presents CellTag Indexing as a broadly applicable genetic multiplexing tool that is complementary with existing single-cell technologies.
Project description:We reasoned that by using a distinct set of oligo-tagged antibodies against ubiquitously expressed proteins, we could uniquely label multiple populations of cells, multiplex them together, and use the barcoded antibody signal as a fingerprint. We refer to this approach as cellular "hashing", as our set of oligos defines a "look up table" to assign each multiplexed cell to its original sample. We demonstrate application of the technique to combine eight samples and run them simultaneously in a single droplet based scRNA-seq run. We show that cell hashtags allow sample multiplexing, confident multiplet identification and super-loading in the context of a commonly used droplet-based scRNA-seq method to drive down the per-cell cost of large-scale scRNA-seq experiments