Laboratory for Systems Biology of Gene Regulatory Elements, Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology, Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin, Germany.
Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Institute of Computational Biology, Neuherberg, Germany.
Science. 2018 May 25;360(6391). doi: 10.1126/science.aaq1723. Epub 2018 Apr 19.
Flatworms of the species are immortal-adult animals contain a large pool of pluripotent stem cells that continuously differentiate into all adult cell types. Therefore, single-cell transcriptome profiling of adult animals should reveal mature and progenitor cells. By combining perturbation experiments, gene expression analysis, a computational method that predicts future cell states from transcriptional changes, and a lineage reconstruction method, we placed all major cell types onto a single lineage tree that connects all cells to a single stem cell compartment. We characterized gene expression changes during differentiation and discovered cell types important for regeneration. Our results demonstrate the importance of single-cell transcriptome analysis for mapping and reconstructing fundamental processes of developmental and regenerative biology at high resolution.
扁形动物 物种的成年动物是不朽的——它们含有大量的多能干细胞，这些干细胞不断分化为所有成年细胞类型。因此，对成年动物的单细胞转录组进行分析应该可以揭示成熟细胞和祖细胞。通过结合扰动实验、基因表达分析、一种从转录变化预测未来细胞状态的计算方法以及谱系重建方法，我们将所有主要的细胞类型置于单个谱系树中，该谱系树将所有细胞连接到单个干细胞隔室。我们描述了分化过程中的基因表达变化，并发现了对再生很重要的细胞类型。我们的研究结果表明，单细胞转录组分析对于以高分辨率绘制和重建发育和再生生物学的基本过程非常重要。
