FANSseq profiling of human striatal cell types

Selective degeneration of striatal projection neurons is one of the main features of Huntington’s disease (HD). The differences between vulnerable and resilient striatal cell types and cell type-specific molecular events associated with HD progression have not been established. Here we employed fluorescence-activated nuclear sorting (FANS) and deep molecular profiling to gain insight into the properties of different cell types of the human striatum in HD and control donors. Populations of cell nuclei from different types of striatal neurons and glia from post-mortem human brain were labeled with cell type-specific probes and separated by FACS, followed by RNAseq-based quantification of nuclear transcript levels.