In a publication in the US-based journal Cell an international collaboration, involving researchers from the Human Protein Atlas, is described. A newly developed large-field-of-view spatial transcriptome method has been used to map the cellular and molecular organization of the macaque cerebral cortex.

A total of 1,493,240 cells from 143 regions of the brain were used for single (nuclei) cell analysis to enable cell-type specific identification of each cell, aided by anatomical parcellation of the brain regions using antibody-based immunostaining. The effort aims to create a detailed map of the cellular organization of the mammalian brain and a comprehensive cell-type taxonomy has been constructed for the entire cortex.

The spatial transcriptomics methods, called Stereo-seq, reveals the global distribution of 264 cell types and their marker genes with regional density and composition of cell types coupled with cortical hierarchy. Interestingly, the study has identified primate-specific cell types with layer distributions different from the mouse brain.

Link to article

Contact person: Dr Jan Mulder, Karolinska Institutet (email: jan.mulder@ki.se)