Abstract
Human organogenesis remains relatively unexplored for ethical and practical reasons. Here, we report the establishment of a single-cell transcriptome atlas of the human fetal pancreas between 7 and 10 post-conceptional weeks of development. To interrogate cell-cell interactions, we describe InterCom, an R-Package we developed for identifying receptor-ligand pairs and their downstream effects. We further report the establishment of a human pancreas culture system starting from fetal tissue or human pluripotent stem cells, enabling the long-term maintenance of pancreas progenitors in a minimal, defined medium in three-dimensions. Benchmarking the cells produced in 2-dimensions and those expanded in 3-dimensions to fetal tissue identifies that progenitors expanded in 3-dimensions are transcriptionally closer to the fetal pancreas. We further demonstrate the potential of this system as a screening platform and identify the importance of the EGF and FGF pathways controlling human pancreas progenitor expansion. From single-cell transcriptome analyses to defining culture media for spheroids, the authors provide a census of information to understand the development of human pancreatic progenitors. This approach identifies signalling pathways (EGF and FGF) regulating progenitor proliferation.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 3144 |
Journal | Nature Communications |
Volume | 12 |
Number of pages | 17 |
ISSN | 2041-1723 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2021 |
Keywords
- BETA-CELLS
- IN-VITRO
- RNA-SEQ
- DIFFERENTIATION
- REVEALS
- GENERATION
- EXPRESSION
- DYSFUNCTION
- TISSUES
- ORGANOGENESIS