Identification of conjunctival epithelial stem/progenitor cell markers

To identify conjunctival epithelial stem/progenitor cell markers, we performed single-cell RNA sequencing of a conjunctival epithelial cell population (CjEC), corneal epithelial cell population (CEC) and ocular surface epithelial cell population (OEC) derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). A further investigation of the highly expressed markers in CjEC that were simultaneously absent or expressed at low levels in CEC and OEC identified several novel conjunctival epithelial markers (including epithelial stem/progenitor cell markers).