FIN-Seq: transcriptional profiling of specific cell types from frozen archived tissue of the human central nervous system.

Nucleic Acids Res
Authors
Keywords
Abstract

Thousands of frozen, archived tissue samples from the human central nervous system (CNS) are currently available in brain banks. As recent developments in RNA sequencing technologies are beginning to elucidate the cellular diversity present within the human CNS, it is becoming clear that an understanding of this diversity would greatly benefit from deeper transcriptional analyses. Single cell and single nucleus RNA profiling provide one avenue to decipher this heterogeneity. An alternative, complementary approach is to profile isolated, pre-defined cell types and use methods that can be applied to many archived human tissue samples that have been stored long-term. Here, we developed FIN-Seq (Frozen Immunolabeled Nuclei Sequencing), a method that accomplishes these goals. FIN-Seq uses immunohistochemical isolation of nuclei of specific cell types from frozen human tissue, followed by bulk RNA-Sequencing. We applied this method to frozen postmortem samples of human cerebral cortex and retina and were able to identify transcripts, including low abundance transcripts, in specific cell types.

Year of Publication
2020
Journal
Nucleic Acids Res
Volume
48
Issue
1
Pages
e4
Date Published
2020 01 10
ISSN
1362-4962
DOI
10.1093/nar/gkz968
PubMed ID
31728515
PubMed Central ID
PMC7145626
Links
Grant list
R01 MH112940 / MH / NIMH NIH HHS / United States
R01 MH096066 / MH / NIMH NIH HHS / United States