Single cell transcriptome atlases of the developing mouse and human spinal cord.

The spinal cord receives input from peripheral sensory neurons and controls motor output by regulating muscle innervating motor neurons. These functions are carried out by neural circuits comprising molecularly and physiologically distinct neuronal subtypes that are generated in a characteristic spatial-temporal arrangement from progenitors in the embryonic neural tube. The systematic mapping of gene expression in mouse embryos has provided insight into the diversity and complexity of cells in the neural tube. For human embryos, however, less information has been available. To address this, we used single cell mRNA sequencing to profile cervical and thoracic regions in four human embryos of Carnegie Stages (CS) CS12, CS14, CS17 and CS19 from Gestational Weeks (W) 4-7. In total we recovered the transcriptomes of 71,219 cells. Overall design: Four time points of human development are sampled (CS12, CS14, CS17, CS19). Where possible, tissue was dissected into brachial and thoracic samples and further separated into biological replicates where enough cells were available.