Peking University, June 20, 2018: A joint study by three Chinese research groups conducted single-cell transcriptome analysis on 22 brain regions of human mid-gestation embryos. This study systematically analyzed the diversity of brain cells across the cortex, showing a diverse makeup of cells as well as the characteristics of gene expression of the same neuron in different brain regions. It also demonstrated that neuron development was unsynchronized in the cerebral cortex. The research, titled Spatial transcriptomic survey of human embryonic cerebral cortex by single-cell RNA-seq analysis, was published on Cell Research online on June 4.
The schematic diagram displaying the dissection of embryonic brain
The three research groups carrying out the study included one led by Tang Fuchou of Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics at Peking University, one led by Wang Xiaoqun of Institute of Biophysics at Chinese Academy of Sciences, and one led by Qiao Jie of Peking University Third Hospital. On March 14, 2018, this same joint team had a paper published on Nature, showing the regulatory role of the prefrontal lobe of the brain in human development.
The newly released article also analyzed expression pattern and co-expression networks of autism risk genes, identified brain regions that were most closely related with autism during embryonic development, and suggested more risk genes that could potentially lead to autism.
Difference in regional cell makeup, validation of excitatory neurons expressing region-specific genes, and the expression network for the autism risk genes
Written by: Fan Xiaofei
Edited by: Zhang Jiang
