Single Cell Transcriptome Analysis of Developing Arcuate Nucleus Neurons Uncovers Their Key Developmental Regulators

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2019 Aug 18

PMID 31420539

Citations 38

Authors

Christian Huisman

HyeYoung Cho

Olivier Brock

Su Jeong Lim

Sung Min Youn

Younjung Park

Sangsoo Kim

Soo-Kyung Lee

Alessio Delogu

Jae W Lee

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Despite the crucial physiological processes governed by neurons in the hypothalamic arcuate nucleus (ARC), such as growth, reproduction and energy homeostasis, the developmental pathways and regulators for ARC neurons remain understudied. Our single cell RNA-seq analyses of mouse embryonic ARC revealed many cell type-specific markers for developing ARC neurons. These markers include transcription factors whose expression is enriched in specific neuronal types and often depleted in other closely-related neuronal types, raising the possibility that these transcription factors play important roles in the fate commitment or differentiation of specific ARC neuronal types. We validated this idea with the two transcription factors, Foxp2 enriched for Ghrh-neurons and Sox14 enriched for Kisspeptin-neurons, using Foxp2- and Sox14-deficient mouse models. Taken together, our single cell transcriptome analyses for the developing ARC uncovered a panel of transcription factors that are likely to form a gene regulatory network to orchestrate fate specification and differentiation of ARC neurons.

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