HGM 2011 - Dubai, UAE

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Milos Pekny


Title: MOLECULAR SIGNATURE OF ASTROCYTES BY SINGLE CELL GENE EXPRESSION PROFILING

Brain and spinal cord contain three neuroectoderm-derived celltypes: astrocytes, neurons and oligodendrocytes. They alloriginate from the same multipotent neural stem cells., astrocytes were viewed as a homogeneous cellpopulation that predominantly supports neuronal functions.findings point to many functions of astrocytes in healthand disease, including control of the number and the functionof neuronal synapses. In contrast to neurons, we have limitedknowledge about functional diversity of astrocytes and itsmolecular basis. To study astrocyte heterogeneity andstem/progenitor cellproperties of astrocytes, we used singlecellgene expression profiling in primary mouse astrocytes anddissociated mouse neurosphere cells. The transcript numbervariability for astrocytes showed lognormal features andrevealed that cells in primary cultures to a large extent coexpressmarkers of astrocytes and neural stem/progenitor cells.
We show how subpopulations of cells can be identified atsingle-cell level using unsupervised algorithms and that genecorrelations can be used to identifydifferences in activity ofimportant transcriptional pathways. We identified twosubpopulations of astrocytes with distinct gene expressionprofiles. One had anexpression profile very similar to that ofneurosphere cells, whereas the othershowed characteristics ofactivated astrocytes in vivo.

Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum
Award for Medical Science

Human Genome Organisation

Centre for Arab Genomic Studies