Project description:Data accompaning to van Gurp et al. Development 2019. single-cell sequencing of the developing mouse pancreas followed by Seurat analysis to discover genes important for alpha and beta cell differentiation.
Project description:Chronic pancreatitis (CP) is a pathogenically complex fibro-inflammatory disorder of the pancreas. Our understanding of CP pathogenesis is partly limited by the incomplete characterization of pancreatic cell types. Here, we performed single-cell RNA sequencing on 3,386 cells from the pancreas of one control mouse and mice with caerulein-induced CP. These data provides a preliminary description of the single-cell transcriptome profiles of mouse pancreata and accurately demonstrates the characteristics of pancreatic ductal cells in CP.
Project description:Exocrine-to-endocrine crosstalk in the pancreas is crucial to maintain beta cell function. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this crosstalk are largely undefined. Trefoil factor 2 (Tff2) is a secreted factor known to promote the proliferation of beta cells in vitro, but its physiological role in vivo in the pancreas is unknown. Also, it remains unclear which pancreatic cell type expresses Tff2 protein. We therefore created a mouse model with a conditional knockout of Tff2 in the murine pancreas. We find that the Tff2 protein is preferentially expressed in acinar but not ductal or endocrine cells. Tff2 deficiency in the pancreas reduces beta cell mass on embryonic day 16.5. However, homozygous mutant mice are born without a reduction of beta cells and with acinar Tff3 compensation by day 7. When mice are aged to 1 year, both male and female homozygous and male heterozygous mutants develop impaired glucose tolerance without affected insulin sensitivity. Perifusion analysis reveals that the second phase of glucose-stimulated insulin secretion from islets is reduced in aged homozygous mutant compared to controls. Collectively, these results demonstrate a previously unknown role of Tff2 as an exocrine acinar cell-derived protein required for maintaining functional endocrine beta cells in mice.
Project description:A number of studies have reported cell heterogeneity within the developing mouse pancreas, as well as the transcriptional profiles corresponding to various cell states. The upstream mechanisms that initiate and maintain gene expression programs across cell states, however, remain largely unknown. Here, we applied single-nucleus ATAC-Seq to developing mouse pancreas to generate an atlas of chromatin accessibility, at single-cell resolution. Our goals were first, to generate an atlas of chromatin accessibility of embryonic mouse pancreas, at single-cell resolution, that can serve as a resource for the field. We aimed to provide such a resource not only for epithelial cells within the pancreas, but for non-epithelial (e.g., mesenchymal) as well. Our second goal was to identify gene regulatory networks governing cell fate transitions through integration of single-cell chromatin accessibility and gene expression data.
Project description:Pancreatic and duodenal homeobox 1 (PDX1) is crucial for pancreas organogenesis, yet the dynamic changes in PDX1 binding in human or mouse developing pancreas have not been examined. To address this knowledge gap, we performed PDX1 ChIP-seq and single-cell RNA-seq using fetal human pancreata. We integrated our datasets with published datasets and revealed the dynamics of PDX1 binding and potential cell-lineage-specific PDX1 bound genes in the pancreas from fetal to adult stages. We identified a core set of developmentally conserved PDX1 bound genes that reveal the broad multifaceted role of PDX1 in pancreas development. Despite the well-known, dramatic changes in PDX1 function and expression, we found that PDX1 bound genes are largely conserved from embryonic to adult stages. This points towards a dual role of PDX1 in regulating the expression of its targets at different ages, dependent on other functionally-congruent or directly-interacting partners. We also showed that PDX1 binding is largely conserved in mouse pancreas. Together, our study reveals PDX1 targets in the developing pancreas in vivo and provides an essential resource for future studies on pancreas development.