Single cell transcriptome analysis of adult murine lung airway epithelium after NAPH-induced injury

To comprehensively study how club cells response to airway epithelial injury, we performed single cell transcriptomic analysis of the normal and NAPH injured lung samples. Our analysis reveals that a previously undescribed pathway promoting mucous metaplasia that involves VEGFa and its receptor KDR. Our single cell RNA sequencing analysis revealed that VEGFR2 (also known as FLK1 or KDR) is expressed in club cell subpopulations. Loss of KDR, its ligand VEGFa, or downstream MEK/ERK causes excessive differentiation of club cells into mucous cells (mainly goblet cells) during development and regeneration following Naphthalene (NAPH) challenge. We performed single cell transcriptomic sequencing of flow purified Epcam+ cells via 10X Genomics platform