GSE167989
Integrating single-cell RNA-sequencing and transcriptomic data reveals essential genes for tooth development processes
The organ development is dictated by the genes preferentially expressed in tissue or cell types uniquely. The clarification of gene expression profile and identification of specific genes in organ provide detailed understanding of organogenesis. Toward this purpose, the genome-wide analysis is a growing powerful tool for understanding development processes in organogenesis. Tooth is composed from enamel, dentin and cementum and these tissues are identical from other organs. The tooth-forming cell types are therefore unique and have complexed organization. The mechanisms of signal induction during tooth development is complicated because of the function of each cell types are still unclear. Previously, we performed the CAGE (Cap Analysis of Gene Expression) using mouse tooth germ to identify the genes preferentially expressed in tooth. The CAGE has advantage in quantification because it counts short reads of 5' end without the bias of transcript length. Single-cell RNA-sequence (scRNA-seq) is a suitable tool revealing gene expression of each cells. The fundamental question of this study is how we can identify the tooth-specific and cell-type specific genes. In this study, we approach this using combination of scRNA-seq and CAGE (Cap Analysis of Gene Expression) as bioinformatics analyses. We obtained the scRNA-seq datasets of 12,212 cells from postnatal-day (P) 1 mouse molars, and the CAGE-seq datasets from P1 molars. scRNA-seq analysis revealed the spatio-temporal expression of tooth-related genes and CAGE determined whether these genes are truly tooth-specific or are expressed in ubiquitously. Furthermore, we identified candidate genes as novel tissue- and cell type- specific markers. Our results show that the integration of scRNA-seq and CAGE-seq improves the highlight genes important for tooth development from numerous gene profiles. These findings contribute resolving the mechanism of tooth development and establish the basis of tooth regeneration in future. Overall design: Examination of epithelial and mesenchymal cells in mouse molar.