Deciphering the spatial-temporal molecular features of human developing hypothalamus at single-cell level

We revealed the molecular and cellular composition along spatial-temporal development of human hypothalamus by single-cell transcriptomic sequencing. The hypothalamus was manually micro-dissected from serial coronal 600-800µm thick slice using a vibratome. We excluded poor quality cells after the gene expression matrix was generated by Cell Ranger with Scanpy (V1.4.4) package. We identified 11 major transcriptomic types including neuroepithelium (NE), neural progenitors (NP), neurons, astrocytes, oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPC), oligodendrocyte (OL), ependymocytes (Ependy), microglial cells, endothelial cells (Endoth), mural cells as well as vascular and leptomeningeal cells (VLMCs) that were characterzied with their respective classic markers. We uncovered molecular diversity of NP subtypes and constructed their developmental trajectory. We also identified various neuronal subpopulations mapped into distinct spatial location. Overall, our data provided cellular and molecular landscape of human hypothalamic development. Overall design: Identification of temporospatial molecular and cellular features of human developing hypothalamus ranging from 7-20 gestational weeks (GW)