The Rhesus Macaque serves a model for Human Lateral Branching Nephrogenesis

Infants born prematurely are at increased risk for chronic kidney disease and end stage renal disease later in life due to low nephron number. The mechanism of how nephrons are formed during late-gestation human kidney development is not known, and direct study of human fetal kidney development is fraught with moral and technical difficulties. In this study, the rhesus macaque kidney was identified to be morphologically similar to the human kidney during late-gestation. The preliminary findings support that kidney progenitor cells age over time and are different from the progenitor cells early in gestation. The non-human primate model could bridge the gap for molecular study of late-gestation human kidney development to ultimately improve nephron numbers in preterm infants. The morphology of third trimester rhesus kidneys was assessed by immunostaining, clearing, and 3D rendering. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and single-nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq) were performed on four cortically enriched fetal rhesus kidneys 129-131 days gestational age (GA) using cold protease digestion and 10xGenomics platform.