single-cell RNA sequencing in patient-derived primary myocytes for facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy

Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) is characterized by sporadic de-repression of the transcription factor DUX4 in skeletal muscle. We employed single-cell RNA-sequencing, combined with pseudotime trajectory modeling, to study FSHD disease etiology and cellular progression in human primary myocytes. We identified a small FSHD-specific cell population in all tested patient-derived cultures and detected new genes associated with DUX4 de-repression. We furthermore generated an FSHD cellular progression model, reflecting both the early burst-like DUX4 expression as well as the downstream activation of various FSHD-associated pathways, which allowed us to correlate DUX4 expression signature dynamics with that of regulatory complexes, thereby facilitating the prioritization of epigenetic targets for DUX4 silencing. This dataset includes data from muscle biopsy-derived myocyte cultures from 2 FSHD1 patients, 2 FSHD2 patients and 2 healthy control individuals