Conservation and divergence of cortical cell organization in human and mouse revealed by MERFISH

Please contact Rongxin Fang ([e-mail]) for any question
about the dataset. The human cerebral cortex has tremendous cellular
diversity. How different cell types are organized in the human cortex and
how cellular organization varies across species remain unclear. In this
study, we performed spatially resolved single-cell profiling of 4000 genes
using multiplexed error-robust fluorescence in situ hybridization
(MERFISH), identified more than 100 transcriptionally distinct cell
populations, and generated a molecularly defined and spatially resolved
cell atlas of the human middle and superior temporal gyrus. We further
explored cell-cell interactions arising from soma contact or proximity in
a cell type–specific manner. Comparison of the human and mouse cortices
showed conservation in the laminar organization of cells and divergence in
somatic interactions across species. Our data revealed human-specific
cell-cell proximity patterns and a marked increase in interaction
enrichment between neurons and non-neuronal cells in the human cortex.