Comparative transcriptional analysis of satellite glial cell injury response

Wellcome Open Research

article

Sara Elgaard Jager¹  Lone Tjener Pallesen²  Lin Lin³  Francesca Izzi⁴  Alana Miranda Pinheiro²  Sara Villa-Hernandez¹  Paolo Cesare⁴  Christian Bjerggaard Vaegter²  Franziska Denk¹ 

[1] Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, Guy's Campus;Department of Biomedicine, Danish Research Institute of Translational Neuroscience - DANDRITE, Nordic-EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine, Aarhus University;Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University, Denmark & Steno and Diabetes Center;NMI Natural and Medical Sciences Institute at the University of Tübingen

关键词: Glia cells;    satellite glial cells;    single cell RNA sequencing;    pain;    dorsal root ganglia;    nerve injury;    cholesterol biosynthesis;   

DOI  :  10.12688/wellcomeopenres.17885.1

学科分类：内科医学

来源: Wellcome

【 摘 要 】

Background: Satellite glial cells (SGCs) tightly surround and support primary sensory neurons in the peripheral nervous system and are increasingly recognized for their involvement in the development of neuropathic pain following nerve injury. SGCs are difficult to investigate due to their flattened shape and tight physical connection to neuronsin vivo and their rapid changes in phenotype and protein expression when culturedin vitro. Consequently, several aspects of SGC function under normal conditions as well as after a nerve injury remain to be explored. The recent advance in single cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) technologies has enabled a new approach to investigate SGCs.Methods: In this study we used scRNAseq to investigate SGCs from mice subjected to sciatic nerve injury. We used a meta-analysis approach to compare the injury response with that found in other published datasets.  Furthermore, we also used scRNAseq to investigate how cells from the dorsal root ganglion (DRG) change after 3 days in culture.Results: From our meta-analysis of the injured conditions, we find that SGCs share a common signature of 18 regulated genes following sciatic nerve crush or sciatic nerve ligation, involving transcriptional regulation of cholesterol biosynthesis. We also observed a considerable transcriptional change when culturing SGCs, suggesting that some differentiate into a specialisedin vitro state while others start resembling Schwann cell-like precursors.Conclusion: By using integrated analyses of new and previously published scRNAseq datasets, this study provides a consensus view of which genes are most robustly changed in SGCs after injury. Our results are available via the Broad Institute Single Cell Portal, so that readers can explore and search for genes of interest.

【 授权许可】

CC BY