The cardiac stroma plays essential roles in health and following cardiac damage. The major player of the stroma with respect to extracellular matrix deposition, maintenance and remodeling is the poorly defined fibroblast. It has long been recognized that there is considerable variability to the fibroblast phenotype. With the advent of new, high throughput analytical methods our understanding and appreciation of this heterogeneity has grown dramatically. This review aims to explore the diversity of cardiac fibroblasts and highlights new insights into the diverse nature of these cells and their progenitors as revealed by single cell sequencing and fate mapping studies. We propose that at least in part the observed heterogeneity is related to the existence of a differentiation cascade within stromal cells. Beyond in-organ heterogeneity, we also discuss how the stromal response to damage differs between non-regenerating organs such as the heart and regenerating organs such as skeletal muscle. In exploring possible causes for these differences, we outline that although fibrogenic cells from different organs overlap in many properties, they still possess organ-specific transcriptional signatures and differentiation biases that make them functionally distinct.

心脏基质在健康和心脏损伤后起着至关重要的作用。基质在细胞外基质沉积、维持和重塑方面的主要参与者是定义不明确的成纤维细胞。人们早就认识到成纤维细胞表型存在相当大的变异性。随着新的高通量分析方法的出现，我们对这种异质性的理解和认识急剧增加。本综述旨在探索心脏成纤维细胞的多样性，并强调对单细胞测序和命运图谱研究揭示的这些细胞及其祖细胞的多样性的新见解。我们提出至少部分观察到的异质性与基质细胞内分化级联的存在有关。除了器官内异质性，我们还讨论了非再生器官（如心脏）和再生器官（如骨骼肌）对损伤的基质反应有何不同。在探索这些差异的可能原因时，我们概述了尽管来自不同器官的纤维化细胞在许多特性上重叠，但它们仍然具有器官特异性转录特征和分化偏差，使它们在功能上有所不同。