The kidney glomerulus is a specialized capillary bed that is involved in urine production and blood pressure control. Glomerular injury is a major cause of chronic kidney disease, a widespread epidemic without therapeutic options. Single-cell transcriptomics have radically improved our ability to characterize complex organs, such as the kidney. Cells of the glomerulus, however, have been largely underrepresented in previous single cell kidney studies due to their paucity and intractability. We used single-cell RNA sequencing to comprehensively characterize the different types of cells in the glomerulus from healthy mice and from four different disease models (nephrotoxic serum nephritis, diabetes, doxorubicin toxicity, CD2AP deficiency). We have generated a comprehensive high-resolution single-cell transcriptomic profile of the kidney glomerulus from healthy and injured mice. The dataset provides a useful resource for identifying novel disease-related genes and pathways.

Ref: Chung JJ, Goldstein L, Chen YJ, Lee J, Webster JD, Roose-Girma M, Paudyal SC, Modrusan Z, Dey A, Shaw AS. Single-Cell Transcriptome Profiling of the Kidney Glomerulus Identifies Key Cell Types and Reactions to Injury. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2020 Oct;31(10):2341-2354. doi: 10.1681/ASN.2020020220. Epub 2020 Jul 10. PMID: 32651223