Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
Science. 2023 Oct 13;382(6667):eadf9941. doi: 10.1126/science.adf9941.
The thalamus plays a central coordinating role in the brain. Thalamic neurons are organized into spatially distinct nuclei, but the molecular architecture of thalamic development is poorly understood, especially in humans. To begin to delineate the molecular trajectories of cell fate specification and organization in the developing human thalamus, we used single-cell and multiplexed spatial transcriptomics. We show that molecularly defined thalamic neurons differentiate in the second trimester of human development and that these neurons organize into spatially and molecularly distinct nuclei. We identified major subtypes of glutamatergic neuron subtypes that are differentially enriched in anatomically distinct nuclei and six subtypes of γ-aminobutyric acid-mediated (GABAergic) neurons that are shared and distinct across thalamic nuclei.
丘脑在大脑中起着核心协调作用。丘脑神经元组织成空间上不同的核，但丘脑发育的分子结构尚不清楚，特别是在人类中。为了开始描绘人类发育中的丘脑细胞命运特化和组织的分子轨迹，我们使用了单细胞和多重空间转录组学。我们表明，在人类发育的第二个三个月中，分子定义的丘脑神经元分化，并且这些神经元组织成空间和分子上不同的核。我们鉴定了谷氨酸能神经元亚型的主要亚型，这些亚型在解剖上不同的核中差异富集，以及六种γ-氨基丁酸介导的（GABAergic）神经元亚型，这些亚型在丘脑核中共享和独特。
