Background Three different cell types constitute the glomerular filter: mesangial cells, endothelial cells, and podocytes. However, to what extent cellular heterogeneity exists within healthy glomerular cell populations remains unknown.

Methods We used nanodroplet-based highly parallel transcriptional profiling to characterize the cellular content of purified wild-type mouse glomeruli.

Results Unsupervised clustering of nearly 13,000 single-cell transcriptomes identified the three known glomerular cell types. We provide a comprehensive online atlas of gene expression in glomerular cells that can be queried and visualized using an interactive and freely available database. Novel marker genes for all glomerular cell types were identified and supported by immunohistochemistry images obtained from the Human Protein Atlas. Subclustering of endothelial cells revealed a subset of endothelium that expressed marker genes related to endothelial proliferation. By comparison, the podocyte population appeared more homogeneous but contained three smaller, previously unknown subpopulations.

Conclusions Our study comprehensively characterized gene expression in individual glomerular cells and sets the stage for the dissection of glomerular function at the single-cell level in health and disease.

背景技术三种不同的细胞类型构成肾小球滤器：肾小球膜细胞，内皮细胞和足细胞。然而，在何种程度上健康的肾小球细胞群体中存在细胞异质性仍是未知的。

方法我们使用基于纳米液滴的高度平行转录谱来表征纯化的野生型小鼠肾小球的细胞含量。

结果近13,000个单细胞转录组的无监督聚类确定了三种已知的肾小球细胞类型。我们提供了肾小球细胞中基因表达的全面在线图集，可以使用交互式且免费提供的数据库来查询和可视化该图集。从人蛋白质图谱获得的免疫组织化学图像鉴定并支持了所有肾小球细胞类型的新型标记基因。内皮细胞亚簇化显示内皮的一个子集，该子集表达与内皮增殖相关的标记基因。相比之下，足细胞群体显得更均匀，但包含三个较小的，以前未知的亚群。

结论我们的研究全面表征了单个肾小球细胞中的基因表达，并为在健康和疾病中单细胞水平解剖肾小球功能奠定了基础。