Reconstructing lineage hierarchies of the distal lung epithelium using single-cell RNA-seq.

ABSTRACT: The mammalian lung is a highly branched network in which the distal regions of the bronchial tree transform during development into a densely packed honeycomb of alveolar air sacs that mediate gas exchange. Although this transformation has been studied by marker expression analysis and fate-mapping, the mechanisms that control the progression of lung progenitors along distinct lineages into mature alveolar cell types are still incompletely known, in part because of the limited number of lineage markers and the effects of ensemble averaging in conventional transcriptome analysis experiments on cell populations. Here we show that single-cell transcriptome analysis circumvents these problems and enables direct measurement of the various cell types and hierarchies in the developing lung. We us

SUBMITTER: Treutlein B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4145853 | biostudies-literature | 2014 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature