Single-cell transcriptomic analysis of corneal organoids during development
Corneal organoids are useful tools for disease modeling and tissue transplantation however they have not yet been well studied during maturation. We characterized human iPSC derived corneal organoids at 1, 2, 3 and 4 months of development using single-cell RNA sequencing to determine the cellular heterogeneity at each stage. We found pluripotent cell clusters committed to epithelial cell lineage at 1 month early corneal epithelial, endothelial and stromal cells markers at 2 months, keratocytes as the largest cell population at 3 months, and a large epithelial cell population at 4 months. We compared organoid to fetal corneal development at different stages and found that 4 month organoids closely resemble the corneal cellular complexity of the fetal (16 post conception week) and adult cornea. Using RNA velocity pseudotime trajectory analysis, we found that eye field primordial cells and limbal stem cells appear to give rise to corneal epithelial cells during development. Overall design: Corneal organoids were characterized at 1, 2, 3 and 4 months during development using single cell RNAseq