mRNA sequencing of esophageal cells and columnar cells from different tissues

In this study, we used RNA sequencing to characterize esophageal progenitors following activation of the hedgehog (HH) pathway in vivo. We observed two main fates following activation of the HH pathway in the squamous epithelium: one population is in an intermediate state between squamous and columnar epithelium, and another achieves a full columnar conversion. We compared these 2 populations to different FACS sorted epithelial cells from different tissues of the gastro-intestinal tract (adult esophagus, embryonic esophagus, transition epithelium from the stomach, corpus of the stomach and small intestine). Our results suggest a multistep process in which esophageal progenitors first turn on a transcriptomic program that resembles the one from embryonic esophagus, then, a subset of these dedifferentiated cells can turn on a columnar differentiation program that shares similarities with intestinal cells. Collectively, these data demonstrate that some esophageal cells can be reprogrammed to generate columnar cells in vivo. Oesophageal mRNA profiles of wild type (WT), K5SmoM2 and K5SmoM2-K8YFP mice by deep sequencing using Illumina本研究采用RNA测序（RNA Sequencing）技术，对体内激活刺猬（HH）信号通路后的食管祖细胞进行特征解析。我们观察到，在鳞状上皮中激活HH通路后，细胞主要存在两种命运：一类细胞处于鳞状上皮与柱状上皮的中间状态，另一类则完全转化为柱状上皮。我们将这两类细胞群与来自胃肠道不同组织（成年食管、胚胎食管、胃过渡上皮、胃体部以及小肠）的经荧光激活细胞分选（FACS）分离的上皮细胞进行了比对分析。研究结果表明，该重编程过程为多步骤进程：食管祖细胞首先激活一套与胚胎食管转录组特征相似的转录程序；随后，这群去分化细胞中的亚群可激活柱状上皮分化程序，该程序与肠道细胞的转录组特征存在相似性。综上，本研究数据证实，部分食管细胞可在体内被重编程为柱状上皮细胞。本数据集包含野生型（WT）、K5SmoM2及K5SmoM2-K8YFP小鼠的食管mRNA表达谱，采用Illumina测序平台完成深度测序。