Single-cell transcriptomic profiling of healthy and dystrophic muscle macrophage

The monocytic/macrophage system is essential for skeletal muscle homeostasis, but its dysregulation contributes to the pathogenesis of muscle degenerative disorders. Despite our increasing knowledge of the role of macrophages in degenerative disease, it still remains unclear how macrophages contribute to muscle fibrosis. Here, we used single-cell transcriptomics to determine the molecular attributes of dystrophic and healthy muscle macrophages. Muscle macrophages were isolated from healthy and dystrophic muscle by FACS to generate single-cell libraries with the 10X Genomics platform, which were then sequenced on Illumina instruments

单核细胞/巨噬细胞系统对骨骼肌稳态维持至关重要，其功能失调可促进肌肉退行性疾病的发病进程。尽管学界对巨噬细胞在退行性疾病中的作用的认知日益深入，但巨噬细胞如何促成肌肉纤维化的具体机制仍未明确。本研究借助单细胞转录组学技术，解析退行性与健康肌肉组织中巨噬细胞的分子特征。研究人员通过荧光激活细胞分选（FACS）从健康及退行性肌肉组织中分离肌肉巨噬细胞，依托10X Genomics平台构建单细胞文库，随后在Illumina测序仪上完成测序。