An interactive murine single cell atlas of the lung responses to radiation injury

Radiation Induced Lung Injury (RILI) is one of the main limiting factors of thorax irradiation, which can induce acute pneumonitis as well as pulmonary fibrosis, the latter being a life-threatening condition. The order of cellular and molecular events in the progression towards fibrosis is key to the physiopathogenesis of the disease, yet their coordination in space and time remains largely unexplored. Here, we present an interactive murine single cell atlas of the lung responses to irradiation. This analysis opens the door for exploration of the spatio-temporal dynamics of the mechanisms that lead to radiation-induced pulmonary fibrosis. It depicts with unprecedented detail cell type-specific radiation-induced responses associated with either lung regeneration or the failure thereof. A better understanding of the mechanisms leading to lung fibrosis will help finding new therapeutic options that could improve patients’ quality of life. Single-cell suspensions were prepared from 10-12 weeks C57BL/6J mice and single cell RNA-seq libraries were generated using 3' V3 or 3'V3 NextGem chemistry kit on Chromium Single cell controller (10x Genomics). This dataset includes 20 samples: 5 non-irradiated control samples; 5 samples from 1 to 5 months 10 Gy post-irradiation; 10 samples from 1 to 5 months 17 Gy post-irradiation (two biological replicates per time point).