Cited by 957Single-cell and spatial transcriptomicsGenomics and Phylogenetic StudiesGenomics and Chromatin Dynamics

Neuronal subtypes and diversity revealed by single-nucleus RNA sequencing of the human brain

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Lake, Blue B., Ai, Rizi, Kaeser, Gwendolyn E., Salathia, Neeraj S., Yung, Yun C., Liu, Rui, Wildberg, Andre, Gao, Derek +13 more·2016·Science

Abstract

Single-nucleus gene expression: Identifying the genes expressed at the level of a single cell nucleus can better help us understand the human brain. Blue et al. developed a single-nuclei sequencing technique, which they applied to cells in classically defined Brodmann areas from a postmortem brain. Clustering of gene expression showed concordance with the area of origin and defining 16 neuronal subtypes. Both excitatory and inhibitory neuronal subtypes show regional variations that define distinct cortical areas and exhibit how gene expression clusters may distinguish between distinct cortical areas. This method opens the door to widespread sampling of the genes expressed in a diseased brain and other tissues of interest. Science , this issue p. 1586

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  • snRNA-seq overcomes the need for intact cell dissociation, thereby minimizing dissociation-associated challenges and providing a more physiologically accurate representation of the brain's cellular heterogeneity.

    “snRNA-seq overcomes the need for intact cell dissociation, thereby minimizing dissociation-associated challenges and providing a more physiologically accurate representation of the brain’s cellular heterogeneity[12, 14, 15].”

    From Comparative analysis of nuclei isolation methods for brain single-nucleus RNA sequencing (2026) · cites this paper as [14]

    The Main Text (page unavailable) says isolating nuclei reduces contamination or degradation encountered with whole-neuron dissociation, and reports that the method identifies neuronal subtypes. It does not establish that snRNA-seq gives a more physiologically accurate representation of the brain’s overall cellular heterogeneity; this study examined neuronal nuclei from six cortical regions. (LLM, conf=0.86)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • snRNA-seq has unlocked the ability to unbiasedly assess transcriptional states of the human brain at single-cell resolution.

    “The advent of snRNA-seq has unlocked the ability to unbiasedly assess transcriptional states of the human brain at single-cell resolution10,11.”
  • Single-cell RNA-seq data from PsychENCODE and other brain studies were uniformly processed with standard pipelines.

    “we used standard pipelines to uniformly process single-cell RNA-seq data from PsychENCODE, in conjunction with other single-cell studies on the brain (14, 16, 20).”
  • Hi-C and single-cell sequencing had not been fully integrated at scale with brain genomics data.

    “new methodologies, such as Hi-C and single-cell sequencing, have yet to be fully integrated at scale with brain genomics data (13–16).”
  • Single-nucleus sequencing of human cortical layer 1 identified 10 GABAergic neuron types, which is more than the 8 types previously described for the entire human cortex.

    “The targeted application of single nucleus sequencing reported here has demonstrated a significantly higher degree of GABAergic neuron complexity in just one layer of the human cerebral cortex (10 types) than what has previously been described in all of the cortex (8 types22).”

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Authors
Lake, B. B., Ai, R., Kaeser, G. E., Salathia, N. S., Yung, Y. C., Liu, R., Wildberg, A., Gao, D., Fung, H.-L., Chen, S., Vijayaraghavan, R., Wong, J., Chen, A., Sheng, X., Kaper, F., Shen, R., Ronaghi, M., Fan, J.-B., Wang, W., Chun, J., & Zhang, K.
Affiliations
  • University of California San Diego (US)
  • Scripps Research Institute (US)
  • Illumina (United States) (US)
  • Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
Corresponding author
  • Lake, Blue B.
  • Ai, Rizi
  • Kaeser, Gwendolyn E.
  • Salathia, Neeraj S.
  • Fan, Jian-Bing
  • Wang, Wei
  • Chun, Jerold
  • Zhang, Kun
Venue
Science
Published
2016-06-24
Volume
352
Issue
6293
Pages
1586-1590
ISSN
  • 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
  • 1095-9203
OpenAlex
W2471513101
Cited by
957
References
37
Citations by year
2026: 48 · 2025: 71 · 2024: 82 · 2023: 133 · 2022: 85 · 2021: 117 · 2020: 126 · 2019: 105 · 2018: 115 · 2017: 68 · 2016: 7
FWCI
51.12
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Science (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • NIH Common Fund Single Cell Analysis Program (1U01MH098977)
  • Neuroplasticity of Aging (5T32AG000216-24)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Chromatin Dynamics
Keywords
neuronal cell types, single-nucleus RNA sequencing, human cerebral cortex, neuronal heterogeneity, transcriptomic heterogeneity, cortical cytoarchitecture, neuron classification, postmortem brain
MeSH terms
Cell Nucleus, Cerebral Cortex, Humans, Neurons, Sequence Analysis, RNA, Gene Expression Profiling, Transcriptome

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