Single Cell Sequencing of Prader-Wlli Syndrome Dental Pulp Stem Cell-derived Neurons

A major challenge to the study and treatment of neurogenetic syndromes is the difficulty in gaining access to live neurons from individuals with these disorders. Although other sources of stem cells are currently available for differentiation into neurons, these can involve invasive procedures and be difficult or expensive to generate limiting their use on a broad scale, especially for rare syndromes which may not be well represented in the local population. Dental pulp stem cells (DPSC) are neural crest derived multipotent stem cells that reside deep the pulp of shed (baby) teeth and have the potential for broad use in the study of neurogenetic disease. Here, we use DPSC-derived neurons to investigate the developmental differences between neurotypical controls and Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) by single cell sequencing using SPLiT-Seq. Overall design: scRNA-seq analysis of DPSC-derived neurons from 5 neurotypical control and 5 PWS subjects. Libraries were prepared with the Evercode Whole Transcriptome kit from Parse Biosciences which involves barcoding and pooling cells from all samples prior to sequencing. Sequencing reads from all samples are distributed across the library. For demultiplexing information please see the 'README.txt' and 'sample_well_IDs.tsv' file. Note that Sample 104 was dropped from downstream analysis after sequencing due to incorrect genetic signature arising from a technical error in library prep.