The Tabula Sapiens: a multiple organ single cell transcriptomic atlas of humans

Abstract

AbstractMolecular characterization of cell types using single cell transcriptome sequencing is revolutionizing cell biology and enabling new insights into the physiology of human organs. While most work has focused on specific organs, there is a need for a reference which enables comparisons of cell types between organs and tissues. We present a human single cell transcriptomic atlas comprising nearly 500,000 cells from 24 different tissues and organs, many from the same donor. This allows us to control for individual variation and enables characterization of more than 400 cell types, their distribution across tissues and tissue specific variation in gene expression. From this we identify the clonal distribution of T cells between tissues, the tissue specific mutation rate in B cells, and analyze the cell cycle state and proliferative potential of shared cell types across tissues. Finally, we characterize cell type specific RNA splicing and how such splicing varies across tissues within an individual.One Sentence SummaryWe used single cell transcriptomics to create a molecularly defined phenotypic reference of human cell types which spans 24 human tissues and organs.