Tissue Type(s): Placenta

Contributed by: Muzlifah Haniffa, Wellcome Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK, Institute of Cellular Medicine, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, Department of Dermatology and NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre, Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, Ashley Moffett, Centre for Trophoblast Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, Sarah A. Teichmann, Wellcome Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK, Theory of Condensed Matter Group, The Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Cambridge, UK

Manuscript: Integrated analyses of single-cell atlases reveal age, gender, and smoking status associations with cell type-specific expression of mediators of SARS-CoV-2 viral entry and highlights inflammatory programs in putative target cells (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.19.049254v1)

Description: This study allows one to visualize and query genes as well as explore cell types, technical batches, and cell metrics associated with the manuscript. If published, this version of the data set is focused on the manuscript and is a subset of what may be made available by the original manuscript.

Original Publication: Vento-Tormo, Roser, et al. "Single-cell reconstruction of the early maternal–fetal interface in humans." Nature 563.7731 (2018): 347-353.

Full dataset: The raw sequencing data, expression-count data with cell classifications and the whole-genome sequencing data are deposited at ArrayExpress, with experiment codes E-MTAB-6701 (for droplet-based data), E-MTAB-6678 (for Smart-seq2 data) and E-MTAB-7304 (for the whole-genome sequencing data). The relevant processed data is shared here in the downloads tab.

Abstract: During early human pregnancy the uterine mucosa transforms into the decidua, into which the fetal placenta implants and where placental trophoblast cells intermingle and communicate with maternal cells. Trophoblast–decidual interactions underlie common diseases of pregnancy, including pre-eclampsia and stillbirth. Here we profile the transcriptomes of about 70,000 single cells from first-trimester placentas with matched maternal blood and decidual cells. The cellular composition of human decidua reveals subsets of perivascular and stromal cells that are located in distinct decidual layers. There are three major subsets of decidual natural killer cells that have distinctive immunomodulatory and chemokine profiles. We develop a repository of ligand–receptor complexes and a statistical tool to predict the cell-type specificity of cell–cell communication via these molecular interactions. Our data identify many regulatory interactions that prevent harmful innate or adaptive immune responses in this environment. Our single-cell atlas of the maternal–fetal interface reveals the cellular organization of the decidua and placenta, and the interactions that are critical for placentation and reproductive success.