Corneal Nonmyelinating Schwann Cells Illuminated by Single Cell Transcriptomics and Visualized by Protein Biomarkers

The cornea is the most innervated tissue in the human body. Myelinated axons upon inserting into the peripheral corneal stroma lose their myelin sheaths and continue into the central cornea wrapped by only nonmyelinating corneal SCs (nm-cSCs). This anatomical organization is believed to be important for central vision. Here we employed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), microscopy, and transgenics to characterize these nm-cSCs of the central cornea. Using principal component analysis, uniform manifold approximation and projection, and unsupervised hierarchal cell clustering of scRNA-seq data derived from central corneal cells of male rabbits, we successfully identified several clusters representing different corneal cell types, including a unique cell cluster representing nm-cSCs. To confirm protein expression of cSC genes, we performed cross-species validation, employing corneal whole mount immunostaining with confocal microscopy in mouse corneas. We expect that our results will advance the future study of nm-cSCs in applications of nerve repair, and provide a resource for the study of corneal sensory function. Examination of non-myelinating Coreneal Schwann Cells through single cell RNA sequencing