英国剑桥大学Berthold Göttgens、John C. Marioni和Èlia Benito-Gutiérrez研究团队合作构建了兔发育的形态学和分子图谱。这一研究成果发表在2023年6月15日出版的国际学术期刊《自然—细胞生物学》上。

本文构建了兔发育的形态学和分子图谱。他们报告了超过18万个单细胞的转录和染色质可及性特征，以及来自胚胎的高分辨率组织学切片，包括原肠胚形成、着床、羊膜发生和早期器官发生。利用邻域比较管道，他们在整个生物体的尺度上比较了兔和小鼠的转录景观。他们描述了滋养细胞分化的基因调控程序，并确定了造血过程中涉及卵黄囊间皮的信号相互作用。

他们展示了如何利用兔和小鼠地图集的组合从稀疏的猕猴和人类数据中提取新的生物学见解。这里报道的数据集和计算管道为更广泛的跨物种方法建立了框架，以破译早期哺乳动物的发育，并且很容易适应在生物医学研究中更广泛地部署单细胞比较基因组学。

据介绍，传统上，由于老鼠的实验和遗传易感性，它一直是生物医学研究中最受欢迎的脊椎动物模型。然而，非啮齿动物胚胎学研究强调，早期小鼠发育的许多方面，如卵筒原肠胚形成和着床方法，与其他哺乳动物不同，从而使对人类发育的推断复杂化。像人类胚胎一样，兔子发育成扁平的双椎盘。

附：英文原文

Title: An atlas of rabbit development as a model for single-cell comparative genomics

Author: Ton, Mai-Linh Nu, Keitley, Daniel, Theeuwes, Bart, Guibentif, Carolina, Ahnfelt-Rnne, Jonas, Andreassen, Thomas Kjrgaard, Calero-Nieto, Fernando J., Imaz-Rosshandler, Ivan, Pijuan-Sala, Blanca, Nichols, Jennifer, Benito-Gutirrez, lia, Marioni, John C., Gttgens, Berthold

Issue&Volume: 2023-06-15

Abstract: Traditionally, the mouse has been the favoured vertebrate model for biomedical research, due to its experimental and genetic tractability. However, non-rodent embryological studies highlight that many aspects of early mouse development, such as its egg-cylinder gastrulation and method of implantation, diverge from other mammals, thus complicating inferences about human development. Like the human embryo, rabbits develop as a flat-bilaminar disc. Here we constructed a morphological and molecular atlas of rabbit development. We report transcriptional and chromatin accessibility profiles for over 180,000 single cells and high-resolution histology sections from embryos spanning gastrulation, implantation, amniogenesis and early organogenesis. Using a neighbourhood comparison pipeline, we compare the transcriptional landscape of rabbit and mouse at the scale of the entire organism. We characterize the gene regulatory programmes underlying trophoblast differentiation and identify signalling interactions involving the yolk sac mesothelium during haematopoiesis. We demonstrate how the combination of both rabbit and mouse atlases can be leveraged to extract new biological insights from sparse macaque and human data. The datasets and computational pipelines reported here set a framework for a broader cross-species approach to decipher early mammalian development, and are readily adaptable to deploy single-cell comparative genomics more broadly across biomedical research. Ton, Keitley et al. provide a morphological and molecular atlas of rabbit development. Comparative studies reveal that combining rabbit and mouse atlases can serve as a model for dissecting early primate development.

DOI: 10.1038/s41556-023-01174-0

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41556-023-01174-0