Single-Cell Transcriptome and Downstream Analyses of Human Stomach Reveal the Cell Diversity and Developmental Features of Gastric and Metaplastic Mucosae

The project was performed to characterize all kinds of human gastric cells and clarify the physiology of normal gastric mucosa and the development of intestinal metaplasia. Single-cell RNA sequence and downstream analyses were applied to elucidate and to build up a hypothesis. Here, we constructed a largest human gastric atlas comprised of 137,610 cells from our university and other two public databases. We identified new possible stem cell marker genes and activated transcription factor in the stem cells. Moreover, we clarified a spatial distribution of the fibroblasts in the gastric mucosa by RNA in situ hybridization and the results suggested the difference of fibroblasts between intestinal metaplasia and genuine colonic mucosa. Cell-cell communication analysis also indicated that a potential interaction in the stem cell niche and intestinal metaplasia-specific interaction between epithelial cells and fibroblasts.