scRNA-seq of sheep abomasal epithelial tissue post-nematode infection. scRNA-seq of sheep abomasal epithelial tissue post-nematode infection

Tuft cells are required for an effective immune response to gastrointestinal parasitic nematodes in mice, but little is known about tuft cells in other animals. Using scRNA-seq, we profiled the transcriptome of tuft cells and other mucosal cell types from the sheep abomasal epithelium following nematode infection. Cells were isolated from abomasum mucosal tissue of two sheep and processed using 10x Genomics Chromium Single Cell 3’ Reagent kit (v.3) using a total of 20,000 input cells. cDNA libraries were sequenced on an Illumina NextSeq 500 system to a depth of 50,000 read pairs per cell. Sequences were mapped to the genomes for ovine (Ovis aries Oar_v3.1; https://www.ensembl.org/Ovis_aries/Info/Index) and bovine (Bos taurus ARS-UCD1.2; https://www.ensembl.org/Bos_taurus/Info/Index) and gene count matrices generated using the Cell Ranger software (v.3.1.0) and analysed using Seurat package (v.3.1) with R version 3.6.0. The “Find Markers” function identified a tuft cell cluster and other distinct epithelial (Epcam+) and immune (Ptprc+) cell clusters.