ScRNA-seq of kidney organoids expressing different APOL1 variants and treated with IFN-?
Apolipoprotein L1 (APOL1) high-risk genotypes G1 and G2 are responsible for the increased risk of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in the African-American population, especially in the presence of interferon gamma (IFN-?). Here, we applied single cell transcriptomics on kidney organoids generated from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to model human APOL1 nephropathy. iPSCs were generated from fibroblasts of two patients with APOL1 nephropathy homozygous for G1 or G2 risk variants, and an isogenic control (G0) was created by gene correction. Kidney organoids were generated according to previously published protocol (Takasato M et al. Nat. Protoc. 2016) and treated with IFN-? for two days to induce APOL1. Twenty-four hours after IFN-? removal, treated organoids from all three lines that were cultured in parallel were harvested for single cell transcriptomics.