This study aimed to understand the maturation of the intestinal epithelium at the suckling-to-weaning transition. Single-cell RNA sequencing was performed on epithelial cells isolated from the caecum of 24/25-day old suckling rabbits with or without access to solid food. Nine intestinal epithelial cell types were found, including stem cells, transit-amplifying cells, absorptive cells (early, intermediate, mature), BEST4+ cells, goblet cells and two subtypes of enteroendocrine cells. Log-normalized count matrices were used for this analysis and the Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection method was used for dimensionality reduction.

The raw data for this study have been deposited in the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) at EMBL-EBI under accession number PRJEB74645 (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB74645). The data are also accessible on the FAANG portal.

For further information, please contact: martin.beaumont@inrae.fr