Description
Background: The kidney glomerulus is a specialized capillary bed that is involved in urine production and blood pressure control. Glomerular injury is a major cause of chronic kidney disease, a widespread epidemic without therapeutic options. Single-cell transcriptomics have radically improved our ability to characterize complex organs, such as the kidney. Cells of the glomerulus, however, have been largely underrepresented in previous single cell kidney studies due to their paucity and intractability.; Methods: We used single-cell RNA sequencing to comprehensively characterize the different types of cells in the glomerulus from healthy mice and from four different disease models (nephrotoxic serum nephritis, diabetes, doxorubicin toxicity, CD2AP deficiency).; Results: All cell types in the glomerulus were identified using unsupervised clustering analysis. We identified novel marker genes and gene signatures of mesangial cells, vascular smooth muscle cells of the afferent and efferent arteriole, parietal epithelial cells, and three different types of endothelial cells. Analysis of the disease models revealed cell type-specific and injury type-specific responses in the glomerulus, including acute activation of the Hippo pathway in podocytes after nephrotoxic immune injury.; Conclusions: We have generated a comprehensive high-resolution single-cell transcriptomic profile of the kidney glomerulus from healthy and injured mice. The dataset provides a useful resource for identifying novel disease-related genes and pathways.
Overall Design
Single cell RNA sequencing of glomerular cells from control mice and four different glomerular injury models
Curator
xm_li