近日，瑞典皇家理工学院Joakim Lundeberg、Michaela Asp等研究人员合作绘制了人类心脏发育的时空器官尺度基因表达和细胞图谱。这一研究成果于2019年12月12日发表在国际学术期刊《细胞》上。

研究人员提出了一种分子方法，揭示了在三个发育阶段填充胚胎心脏细胞类型的全面转录概况，并将细胞类型特异性基因表达映射到特定的解剖结构域。空间转录组学确定了与每个发育阶段中不同的解剖区域相对应的独特基因谱。通过单细胞RNA测序鉴定的人类胚胎心脏细胞类型证实并丰富了胚胎心脏基因表达的空间注释。然后使用原位测序来完善这些结果，并为三个发育阶段创建空间亚细胞图谱。最后，研究人员创建了人类心脏发育的公开访问网络资源，以促进人类心脏发生的未来研究。

据介绍，人类心脏形态发生的过程尚未完全了解。其完整特征要求深入研究具有单细胞空间分辨率基因表达的全器官模式。

附：英文原文

Title: A Spatiotemporal Organ-Wide Gene Expression and Cell Atlas of the Developing Human Heart

Author: Michaela Asp, Stefania Giacomello, Ludvig Larsson, Chenglin Wu, Daniel Fürth, Xiaoyan Qian, Eva Wrdell, Joaquin Custodio, Johan Reimegrd, Fredrik Salmén, Cecilia sterholm, Patrik L. Sthl, Erik Sundstrm, Elisabet kesson, Olaf Bergmann, Magda Bienko, Agneta Mnsson-Broberg, Mats Nilsson, Christer Sylvén, Joakim Lundeberg

Issue&Volume: 2019/12/12

Abstract: The process of cardiac morphogenesis in humans is incompletely understood. Its fullcharacterization requires a deep exploration of the organ-wide orchestration of geneexpression with a single-cell spatial resolution. Here, we present a molecular approachthat reveals the comprehensive transcriptional landscape of cell types populatingthe embryonic heart at three developmental stages and that maps cell-type-specificgene expression to specific anatomical domains. Spatial transcriptomics identifiedunique gene profiles that correspond to distinct anatomical regions in each developmentalstage. Human embryonic cardiac cell types identified by single-cell RNA sequencingconfirmed and enriched the spatial annotation of embryonic cardiac gene expression.In situ sequencing was then used to refine these results and create a spatial subcellularmap for the three developmental phases. Finally, we generated a publicly availableweb resource of the human developing heart to facilitate future studies on human cardiogenesis.

DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.11.025

Source: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(19)31282-6