Project description:A single cell suspension was generated from IDOL KO and Control mouse hypothalami, and single-cell mRNAseq libraries were generated with Drop-Seq.
Project description:A 2-mg frozen section of hypothalamus from a single mouse was homogenized in 200 µL of denaturing solution(7 M urea, 2 M thiourea, 20 mM dithiothreitol) containing cOmplete Mini Protease Inhibitor Cocktail (Roche). Peptide extracts equivalent to 135 µg of tissue were analyzed by LC-MS/MS.
Project description:Alterations in metabolism, sleep patterns, body composition, and hormone status are all key features of aging. The hypothalamus is a well-conserved brain region that controls these homeostatic and survival-related behaviors. Despite the importance of this brain region in healthy aging, little is known about the intrinsic features of hypothalamic aging. Here, we utilize single nuclei RNA-sequencing to assess the transcriptomes of 40,064 hypothalamic nuclei from young and aged female mice. We identify cell type-specific signatures of aging in neurons, astrocytes, and microglia, as well as among the diverse collection of neuronal subtypes in this region. We uncover key changes in cell types critical for metabolic regulation and body composition, as well as in an area of the hypothalamus linked to cognition. In addition, our analysis reveals female-specific changes in sex chromosome regulation in the aging brain. This study identifies critical cell-specific features of the aging hypothalamus in mammals.
Project description:The hypothalamus is one of the most complex brain structures whose development involves a plastic process of neuronal fate specification. Progress has been made to decipher the gene regulatory programs that are responsible for hypothalamus development; however, the molecular developmetal trajectory of hyothalamus is largely unknown. To understand how pre- and postmitotic transcriptional programs interact and coordinate to endow neuronal cell subtypes with their characteristic properties during hypothalamic development, we performed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) on single cells derived from Rax+ hypothalamic neuroepithelium at four critical developmental points during hypothalamic development. Our single-cell analysis provides a developmental landscape of mouse hypothalamus. We show that while the fate of radial glial cells (RGCs) is predetermined before differentiation but lack spatial code to distinguish from each other, different clusters of intermediate progenitors (IPCs) emerge to display diversifying fates and subdivide hypothalamic primordium into distinct spatially-restricted progenitor domains. We further characterize the maturation dynamics of hypothalamic neurons and suggest that immature neurons could evolve into multiple peptidergic neuronal subtypes. Finally, we identify sets of transcription factors (TFs) serving as regulons to determine the fate of diverse GABAergic and Glutamatergic neurons in hypothalamus. Together, our study offers a single-cell transcriptional framework for the hypothalamus developmental trajectory and propose a cascade diversifying model to deconstruct the origin of neuronal diversity in hypothalamus.
Project description:Using a custom primer set for cDNA library construction we performed single cell RNA sequencing on FACs sorted tdTomato positive cells from single cell suspensions prepared from the hypothalamus of mice expressing cre-recombinase under the endogenus KLB promoter that were crossed with tdTomato reporter mice (Ai14). We then performed unbiased clustering analysis on 1,904 cells using the single cell transcriptomes to identify 12 different cell types which express KLB in the hypothalamus including neuronal and non-neuronal cell types. This information was then used to delete KLB in specific cell populations to determine the direct target of FGF21 in the brain responsible for suppression of sucrose preference.