Single-cell chromatin accessibility landscape reveals diversity in regulatory regions across distinct adult rat cortex

The rat has been used widespread as an experimental animal for modelling human disease and toxicology and for psychological, medical and biological research especially in neurological disease. To discover regulatory elements driving the specificity of gene expression in different cell type and regions of the adult rat brain. We applied a single-cell ATAC-seq assay, DNBelab C Series, to generated a profile of open chromatin from four dissected areas of adult SD rat brain. High-quality ATAC-seq data was obtained for 59,023 single cells and identified 16 distinct cell types with marker gene. We found that different regions have differences in the proportion of excitatory neuron cells and gene expression We further found that some interesting transcription factors have great guiding significance in the exploration and treatment of the pathogenesis of various neurological diseases. For example, the reductions in SPI1 contribute to a delayed onset of Alzheimer’s disease and KLF4 may be a potential therapeutic target for neurodegenerative diseases. Mutations of the KLF6 gene play a role in the pathogenesis of astrocytic gliomas and NEUROD2 pathogenic mutations caused ASD and intellectual disability. Thus, this cortex altas serves as a resource for understanding the chromatin regulatory landscape of diverse rat brain cell types and interpreting the key of regulatory network of neuropathogenesis.