A Harmonized Atlas of Spinal Cord Cell Types and Their Spatial Organization
Published in Nature Communications, 2021
Recommended citation: Russ DE, Cross RBP, Li L, Koch SC, Matson KJE, Yadav A, Alkaslasi MR, Lee DI, Le Pichon CE, Menon V, Levine AJ. A harmonized atlas of mouse spinal cord cell types and their spatial organization. Nat Commun. 2021 Sep 29;12(1):5722. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-25125-1. Erratum in: Nat Commun. 2022 Feb 18;13(1):1033. Erratum in: Nat Commun. 2022 Oct 19;13(1):6184. PMID: 34588430; PMCID: PMC8481483.
ABSTRACT
Multiple single cell atlases have been described for the mouse spinal cord, but this collection of disparate studies has failed to lay a solid foundation for spinal cord biology in the transcriptomic era. We created a harmonized atlas that unifies these studies into a common framework. We found a hierarchical structure of cell type relationships amongst postnatal spinal cord neurons, with spatial location providing the highest level of organization, followed by neurotransmitter status, “family”, and finally, dozens of refined populations. We validated a combinatorial panel of in situ probes for known and novel marker genes and defined the location of each cell type in adult tissue. We incorporated embryonic data to reveal putative developmental lineages for each cell type. Finally, we developed a website to share these resources widely. This work provides an unprecedented view of spinal cell types, their specific gene expression signatures, and the general molecular organization.
Full Text
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