single-cell RNA sequencing in patient-derived primary myocytes for facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy

Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) is characterized by sporadic de-repression of the transcription factor DUX4 in skeletal muscle. We employed single-cell RNA-sequencing, combined with pseudotime trajectory modeling, to study FSHD disease etiology and cellular progression in human primary myocytes. We identified a small FSHD-specific cell population in all tested patient-derived cultures and detected new genes associated with DUX4 de-repression. We furthermore generated an FSHD cellular progression model, reflecting both the early burst-like DUX4 expression as well as the downstream activation of various FSHD-associated pathways, which allowed us to correlate DUX4 expression signature dynamics with that of regulatory complexes, thereby facilitating the prioritization of epigenetic targets for DUX4 silencing. Overall design: This dataset includes data from muscle biopsy-derived myocyte cultures from 2 FSHD1 patients, 2 FSHD2 patients and 2 healthy control individuals