Single-cell Transcriptional Atlas of Murine Collecting Lymphatic Vessels

The muscle cells within the wall of collecting lymphatic vessels exhibit tonic and autonomous phasic contractions, which drive active lymph transport to maintain tissue-fluid homeostasis and support immune surveillance. Damage to the lymphatic muscle cells (LMC) disrupts lymphatic function and is related to various diseases. Despite their importance, knowledge of the transcriptional signatures in LMC and how they relate to lymphatic function in normal and diseases contexts is largely missing. In this study, we have generated to date the most comprehensive transcriptional single-cell atlas—including LMC—of collecting lymphatic vessels in mouse dermis at various ages. Overall design: To characterize the transcriptomes of the cells that make up the walls of collecting lymphatic vessels and the surrounding tissue, we isolated dermal collecting lymphatic vessels that connect the inguinal lymph node and axillary lymph node in 6-week-old (young), 12-month-old (middle-aged), and 18-month-old (aged) C56BL/6J mice from both males and females for 10X Genomics single-cell library construction and subsequent Illumina high throughput sequencing.