Single-cell Transcriptomics Reveals the Divergent Developmental Lineage Trajectories during Human Pituitary Development

The anterior pituitary gland plays central roles in body growth, reproduction, metabolism and the stress response. In this study, we performed single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) of 4,113 individual cells from human fetal pituitaries. We characterized divergent developmental trajectories with distinct transitional intermediate states in five hormone-producing cell lineages. Furthermore, we characterized the cellular heterogeneity of pituitary stem cells, identifying a hybrid epithelial/mesenchymal state and an early-to-late state transition. These analyses define a single-cell resolution roadmap for human pituitary development. In this study, we performed single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) of 4,113 individual cells from human fetal pituitaries. Raw data of human fetal pituitary have been deposited in the GSA (Genome Sequence Archive) databases of the National Genomics Data Center (NGDC, https://bigd.big.ac.cn/) under the BioProject accession number PRJCA003249.