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  • Year in Review
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SINGLE-CELL TECHNOLOGIES IN 2019

The power of one: advances in single-cell genomics in the kidney

Nature Reviews Nephrology volume 16, pages 73–74 (2020)Cite this article

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Single-cell genomics provide a powerful approach to investigate the intrinsic complexity of the kidney and understand the diverse cell types and states that exist during kidney development, homeostasis and disease. Several advances were made in 2019 that enhance our understanding of kidney immune cell states in health and disease and the quality of current kidney organoid model systems for studying human diseases.

Key advances

  • Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has provided a comprehensive census of the immune cell landscape of the kidney, including zonation of immune cells in homeostasis as well as patterns of injury in lupus nephritis1,2,3.

  • scRNA-seq enabled detailed comparative analysis of podocyte development and maturation in human kidney organoids compared with that of embryonic kidney6.

  • scRNA-seq has proven a valuable tool with which to assess the reproducibility of human kidney organoids, pinpoint sources of variability and demonstrate that organoid transplantation diminishes off-target cells7.

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Fig. 1: Single-cell genomics has provided unprecedented insights into the biology of the human kidney in health and disease.

References

  1. Stewart, B. J. et al. Spatiotemporal immune zonation of the human kidney. Science 365, 1461–1466 (2019).

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  7. Subramanian, A. et al. Single cell census of human kidney organoids shows reproducibility and diminished off-target cells after transplantation. Nat. Commun. 10, 5462 (2019).

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  8. Czerniecki, S. M. et al. High-throughput screening enhances kidney organoid differentiation from human pluripotent stem cells and enables automated multidimensional phenotyping. Cell Stem Cell 22, 929–940.e4 (2018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Abbe R. Clark & Anna Greka

  2. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Abbe R. Clark & Anna Greka

Authors
  1. Abbe R. Clark
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  2. Anna Greka
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anna Greka.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Clark, A.R., Greka, A. The power of one: advances in single-cell genomics in the kidney. Nat Rev Nephrol 16, 73–74 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41581-019-0237-1

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