Single cell transcriptomics reveal the heterogeneity of the human cornea to identify novel markers of the limbus and stroma

DOI

The cornea is the clear window that lets light into the eye. It is composed of five layers: epithelium, Bowman’s layer, stroma, Descemet’s membrane and endothelium. The maintenance of its structure and transparency are determined by the functions of the different cell types populating each layer. Attempts to regenerate corneal tissue and understand disease conditions requires knowledge of how cell profiles vary across this heterogeneous tissue. We performed a single cell transcriptomic profiling of 19,472 cells isolated from eight healthy donor corneas. Our analysis delineates the heterogeneity of the corneal layers by identifying cell populations and revealing cell states that contribute in preserving corneal homeostasis. We identified expression of CAV1, HOMER3 and CPVL in the corneal epithelial limbal stem cell niche, CKS2, STMN1 and UBE2C were exclusively expressed in highly proliferative transit amplifying cells, CXCL14 was expressed exclusively in the suprabasal/superficial limbus, and and NNMT was exclusively expressed by stromal keratocytes. Overall, this research provides a basis to improve current primary cell expansion protocols, for future profiling of corneal disease states, to help guide pluripotent stem cells into different corneal lineages, and to understand how engineered substrates affect corneal cells to improve regenerative therapies.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.34894/X7ZSDZ
Metadata Access https://dataverse.nl/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=doi:10.34894/X7ZSDZ
Provenance
Creator Català, Pere ORCID logo; Groen, Nathalie; Dehnen, Jasmin; Soares, Eduardo; van Velthoven, Arianne; Nuijts, Rudy; Dickman, Mor; LaPointe, Vanessa ORCID logo
Publisher DataverseNL
Contributor LaPointe, Vanessa
Publication Year 2021
Rights CC0 Waiver; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess; https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact LaPointe, Vanessa (Maastricht University)
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format application/octet-stream; image/png; image/tiff; image/jpeg; application/pdf; application/gzip
Size 372355072; 56885248; 156258304; 147611648; 164904960; 700997632; 163127296; 9265152; 268673024; 208138240; 510771200; 26595; 25710; 24294; 4320218; 2881780; 110179; 1080218; 117577; 505302; 400734; 790320; 136670; 568302; 481830; 1344518; 1803070; 1315762; 424230912; 89382912; 294531072; 61214720; 691704; 2881779; 427930; 191702; 160008; 919210; 893288; 772502; 739482; 863652; 837026; 661380; 2880233; 720231; 2880232; 720232; 2880231; 721780; 90071; 506923; 388240; 1517844; 33039324; 338698; 19652932; 375456; 394013; 696622; 653359; 672997; 669763; 650638; 342931; 1224885; 33204588; 20292401; 45023012; 1018519; 20924216; 575468; 18725916; 27504896; 3755268; 144010; 929332; 1139738; 519366; 876616; 3452748; 2881781; 721781; 1143507; 69125; 68879; 502980; 1165068; 191026; 190790; 338840; 4565993; 284829; 577195849; 258688; 97090; 131672; 128006; 529734; 139187; 1054924; 16540420; 638477; 9031080; 14389016; 34429736; 9627293; 16765812; 5834831; 18948724; 4348936; 14045904; 3758647; 16517536; 365994; 5732096; 287419; 2643228; 405069; 5489452; 504248; 1005950; 326874; 609728; 54987; 731160; 362889; 1163851; 1154977
Version 1.0
Discipline Life Sciences; Medicine