Back An international team of researchers completes the first whole-body cell atlas of a non-human primate

An international team of researchers completes the first whole-body cell atlas of a non-human primate

The research will provide important information on the development of possible treatments for neurological and obesity-related diseases, among other human conditions.

13.04.2022

Imatge inicial

In a breakthrough that could lead to scientific progress in the treatment of human diseases, researchers from BGI-Research, Jilin University and the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health (Chinese Academy of Sciences), together with teams from 35 international institutions, including Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) through the Cell Biology Research Group of the Department of Medicine and Health Sciences (MELIS),  led by Pura Muñoz-Cánoves (UPF full professor, and also ICREA, CIBERNED and National Centre for Cardiovascular Research - CNIC professor), have today published the world’s first whole-body cell transcriptomic atlas of non-human primates in the scientific journal Nature.

In the words of Pura Muñoz-Cánoves, “this work will be a fundamental reference for this field of research and will be very useful for future studies of primates, including humans, as it will help to understand the nature of our own species”. And, she adds that “the effort made by our colleagues in China is extraordinary: they have generated an atlas that covers more than one million cells of 45 tissues from the adult non-human primate (NHP) Macaca fascicularis.

“This work will be a fundamental reference for this field of research and will be very useful for future studies of primates, including humans, as it will help to understand the nature of our own species”

Using the DNBelab C4 single-cell library sequencing platform, independently developed by BGI-Research, the researchers completed the single-cell transcriptome of 45 tissues and organs from long-tailed macaque (cynomolgus) monkeys, obtaining a total of 1.14 million single-cell data and identifying 113 major cell types.

This study and other large scale primate research at the single-cell level are only possible through developments in advanced sequencing technology. The proprietary technology of BGI-Research enables extensive and multi-dimensional single-cell analysis with high sensitivity and accuracy.

Non-human primates, like macaques, are the closest species to humans in the evolutionary tree. By mapping the macaque transcriptome at the single-cell level, scientists now have a database, or single-cell library, that can be used for

  • Developing methods for human disease diagnosis and treatment,
  • Assessing clinical drug efficacy,
  • Analysing cell evolution among species, and
  • Analysing advanced cognitive functions of the brain.

Individual cell mapping has allowed the team to identify the types of cells that may contribute to human diseases or make individuals more susceptible to disease. For example, in covid-19, the greatest manifestation is pneumonia because SARS-CoV-2 infects a small group of cells in the lung. However, single-cell mapping of the macaque also identified certain cells in other tissues that may become infected in primates. This can help medics understand where to look for signs of covid-19.

Single-cell mapping can also help identify which cells metabolize fat calories, allowing researchers to understand the underlying factors that contribute to obesity. Similarly, this process could help identify which cells regulate neural circuits in the brain, leading to possible treatments for neurological diseases. 

“Single-cell research is transforming our understanding of tissue and organ functions at a cellular level, which informs how diseases develop and how they can be treated”, comments Dr. Liu Longqi from BGI-Research, one of the corresponding authors of the article. And he adds that “having a whole-body organ single-cell map of the adult macaque will significantly improve the ability to pinpoint how to develop potential treatments for human diseases with greater precision”.

“By understanding cell types and their characteristics, scientists will be able to predict the impact of disease treatments on specific cell structures and thus develop more targeted approaches for single-gene or complex genetic diseases”, assures Dr. Xu Xun, co-author of the article and director of BGI-Research.

“This study fills the gap in the single-cell map of non-human primates and is a rich data resource that will serve as a very important reference for the evolution of species in the future, brain science, drug evaluation and screening, and preclinical research studies”, said another of the corresponding authors, Dr. Miguel A. Esteban, of Jilin University and the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health (Chinese Academy of Sciences).

For Pura Muñoz-Cánoves and Joan Isern (senior researcher at the CNIC who has also participated in the study), “with regard to skeletal muscle, the tissue of interest in our laboratory, single-core RNA-seq offers the possibility of studying cell populations that cannot be characterized by the conventional analysis of single-cell RNA-seq, such as the myonuclei of multinucleated skeletal muscle fibres”. And she adds that “this atlas will therefore be valuable to understand tissues that have not been profiled at all at the single cell/nucleus level in humans or that lack a sufficient number of cells, establishing adaptive comparisons between species and predicting susceptibility to diseases”.

The study Cell transcriptomic atlas of the non-human primate Macaca fascicularis has involved researchers from China, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Sweden and the United Kingdom, as well as Spain.

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