Single nuclei RNAseq of rat area postrema and nucleus tractus solitarius

We performed single-nuclei RNAseq of Sprague Dawley rat area postrema and nucleus tractus solitarius brain samples to identify cellular subtypes. Overall design: We performed the 10x Genomics 3' gene expression assay (v3.1) on nuclei isolated from frozen Sprague Dawley rat area postrema and nucleus tractus solitarius combined brain punches. At the onset of the dark cycle, rats (n=4, ~400 g) were injected with saline (i.p.). After six hours, rats were deeply anesthetized with a triple cocktail of ketamine, xylazine and acepromazine (180 mg/kg, 5.4 mg/kg and 1.28 mg/kg, respectively; i.p.) in the middle of the dark phase. Brains were removed and snap-frozen in dry ice-cold hexane. Three adjacent micro-punch samples (each ~1 cubic mm) containing the AP and left and right NTS were collected from coronally-prepared brains on a cryostat, pooled together, and stored at -80°C until further processing. Nuclei were isolated by differential centrifugation and microfluidically captured using the 10x Genomics Chromium controller. Sequencing libraries were constructed and sequenced on an Illumina NovaSeq 6000.