Cell sub-journal: Establishing a transcriptomic reference map of human hippocampal glial cells

The team of Professor Guoli Ming and Professor Hongjun Song of the University of Pennsylvania published a research paper
in the journal Cell Stem Cell entitled: A single-cell transcriptome atlas of glial diversity in the human hippocampus across the postnatal lifespan.

This study establishes the molecular atlas of a variety of human glial cells and their subsets at various ages, including astrocytes, oligodendrocytes and their precursor cells and microglia, and further elucidates the application value of this reference map to multi-cell research and analysis, including evaluating in vitro differentiation models based on human stem cells, and exploring the molecular pathology of brain diseases such as Alzheimer's disease
.

Glial cells have a significant impact on brain development and disease and also change dynamically with age, yet the molecular diversity of human glial cells and their subpopulations at all ages remains unknown
.
Human hippocampal samples from five age groups: infants, infants, adolescents, adults, and the elderly were collected and analyzed using single-cell transcriptome sequencing to establish a transcriptome-level reference map
.

The study detailed the molecular characteristics of different subpopulations of astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and their precursor cells and microglia and revealed their associations
with specific physiological functions, abundances with age, and disease.

Importantly, the study illustrates two applications
of this reference map.
First, the research team evaluated the glial cell subtypes by comparing the reference map with multiple existing stem cell-based in vitro differentiation models
.
Second, the authors used reference maps to explore the molecular pathology of glial cell subsets in Alzheimer's disease
.

Experimental design process

The publication of this study greatly expands the academic community's understanding of glial cell diversity, molecular changes of subsets of various ages, and dysregulation in neurological diseases, and provides an important reference map for stem cell-based glial cell differentiation in vitro
.