Single nucleus transcriptomic analysis of human dorsal root ganglion neurons

Somatosensory neurons with cell bodies in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG) project to the skin, muscles, bones, and viscera to detect touch and temperature as well as to mediate proprioception and many types of interoception. In addition, the somatosensory system conveys the clinically relevant noxious sensations of pain and itch. Here we used single nuclear transcriptomics to characterize the classes of human DRG neurons that detect these diverse types of stimuli. Notably, multiple types of human DRG neurons have transcriptomic features that resemble their mouse counterparts although expression of genes considered important for sensory function often differed between species. More unexpectedly, we demonstrated that several classes of mouse neurons have no direct equivalents in humans and human specific cell-types were also identified. This dataset should serve as a valuable resource for the community, for example as means of focusing translational efforts on molecules with conserved expression across species. Nuclei from dorsal root ganglia (DRG) from 5 organ donors (1 male, 4 female) were isolated. One DRG was divided into two preparations (hDRG3 and hDRG5 are from the same donor). Neuronal nuclei were purified with anti-NeuN antibody and single nucleus RNA-seq were performed with 10x Genomics method (v2 chemistry for hDRG1-hDRG3 and v3 chemistry for hDRG4-hDRG6).