Recent advances in 3D culture systems have led to the generation of brain organoids that resemble different human brain regions; however, a 3D organoid model of the midbrain containing functional ...midbrain dopaminergic (mDA) neurons has not been reported. We developed a method to differentiate human pluripotent stem cells into a large multicellular organoid-like structure that contains distinct layers of neuronal cells expressing characteristic markers of human midbrain. Importantly, we detected electrically active and functionally mature mDA neurons and dopamine production in our 3D midbrain-like organoids (MLOs). In contrast to human mDA neurons generated using 2D methods or MLOs generated from mouse embryonic stem cells, our human MLOs produced neuromelanin-like granules that were structurally similar to those isolated from human substantia nigra tissues. Thus our MLOs bearing features of the human midbrain may provide a tractable in vitro system to study the human midbrain and its related diseases.
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•Self-organizing midbrain-like organoids (hMLOs) develop from hPSCs in 3D culture•hMLOs, but not mouse MLOs or human cerebral organoids, produce neuromelanin•hMLOs secrete dopamine (DA) and neurons within the hMLOs form functional synapses•Neurons within hMLOs exhibit SNpc DA neuron-like electrophysiological properties
Jo et al. report a method for generating human midbrain-like organoids (hMLOs) from hPSCs in 3D culture. The hMLOs contain distinct layers of neuronal cells expressing human midbrain markers, such as neuromelanin, are electrically active, form functional synapses, and produce dopamine, suggesting that they may be useful for studying human midbrain.
DNA methylation (DNAm) is important in brain development and is potentially important in schizophrenia. We characterized DNAm in prefrontal cortex from 335 non-psychiatric controls across the ...lifespan and 191 patients with schizophrenia and identified widespread changes in the transition from prenatal to postnatal life. These DNAm changes manifest in the transcriptome, correlate strongly with a shifting cellular landscape and overlap regions of genetic risk for schizophrenia. A quarter of published genome-wide association studies (GWAS)-suggestive loci (4,208 of 15,930, P < 10(-100)) manifest as significant methylation quantitative trait loci (meQTLs), including 59.6% of GWAS-positive schizophrenia loci. We identified 2,104 CpGs that differ between schizophrenia patients and controls that were enriched for genes related to development and neurodifferentiation. The schizophrenia-associated CpGs strongly correlate with changes related to the prenatal-postnatal transition and show slight enrichment for GWAS risk loci while not corresponding to CpGs differentiating adolescence from later adult life. These data implicate an epigenetic component to the developmental origins of this disorder.
Genome-wide association studies have identified 108 schizophrenia risk loci, but biological mechanisms for individual loci are largely unknown. Using developmental, genetic and illness-based RNA ...sequencing expression analysis in human brain, we characterized the human brain transcriptome around these loci and found enrichment for developmentally regulated genes with novel examples of shifting isoform usage across pre- and postnatal life. We found widespread expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs), including many with transcript specificity and previously unannotated sequence that were independently replicated. We leveraged this general eQTL database to show that 48.1% of risk variants for schizophrenia associate with nearby expression. We lastly found 237 genes significantly differentially expressed between patients and controls, which replicated in an independent dataset, implicated synaptic processes, and were strongly regulated in early development. These findings together offer genetics- and diagnosis-related targets for better modeling of schizophrenia risk. This resource is publicly available at http://eqtl.brainseq.org/phase1 .
The human prefrontal cortex (PFC), a mastermind of the brain, is one of the last brain regions to mature. To investigate the role of epigenetics in the development of PFC, we examined DNA methylation ...in ∼14,500 genes at ∼27,000 CpG loci focused on 5′ promoter regions in 108 subjects range in age from fetal to elderly. DNA methylation in the PFC shows unique temporal patterns across life. The fastest changes occur during the prenatal period, slow down markedly after birth and continue to slow further with aging. At the genome level, the transition from fetal to postnatal life is typified by a reversal of direction, from demethylation prenatally to increased methylation postnatally. DNA methylation is strongly associated with genotypic variants and correlates with expression of a subset of genes, including genes involved in brain development and in de novo DNA methylation. Our results indicate that promoter DNA methylation in the human PFC is a highly dynamic process modified by genetic variance and regulating gene transcription. Additional discovery is made possible with a stand-alone application, BrainCloudMethyl.
RNA editing is increasingly recognized as a molecular mechanism regulating RNA activity and recoding proteins. Here we surveyed the global landscape of RNA editing in human brain tissues and ...identified three unique patterns of A-to-I RNA editing rates during cortical development: stable high, stable low and increasing. RNA secondary structure and the temporal expression of adenosine deaminase acting on RNA (ADAR) contribute to cis- and trans-regulatory mechanisms of these RNA editing patterns, respectively. Interestingly, the increasing pattern was associated with neuronal maturation, correlated with mRNA abundance and potentially influenced miRNA binding energy. Gene ontology analyses implicated the increasing pattern in vesicle or organelle membrane-related genes and glutamate signaling pathways. We also found that the increasing pattern was selectively perturbed in spinal cord injury and glioblastoma. Our findings reveal global and dynamic aspects of RNA editing in brain, providing new insight into epitranscriptional regulation of sequence diversity.
We used the 10x Genomics Visium platform to define the spatial topography of gene expression in the six-layered human dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. We identified extensive layer-enriched expression ...signatures and refined associations to previous laminar markers. We overlaid our laminar expression signatures on large-scale single nucleus RNA-sequencing data, enhancing spatial annotation of expression-driven clusters. By integrating neuropsychiatric disorder gene sets, we showed differential layer-enriched expression of genes associated with schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder, highlighting the clinical relevance of spatially defined expression. We then developed a data-driven framework to define unsupervised clusters in spatial transcriptomics data, which can be applied to other tissues or brain regions in which morphological architecture is not as well defined as cortical laminae. Last, we created a web application for the scientific community to explore these raw and summarized data to augment ongoing neuroscience and spatial transcriptomics research ( http://research.libd.org/spatialLIBD ).
Previous investigations have combined transcriptional and genetic analyses in human cell lines, but few have applied these techniques to human neural tissue. To gain a global molecular perspective on ...the role of the human genome in cortical development, function and ageing, we explore the temporal dynamics and genetic control of transcription in human prefrontal cortex in an extensive series of post-mortem brains from fetal development through ageing. We discover a wave of gene expression changes occurring during fetal development which are reversed in early postnatal life. One half-century later in life, this pattern of reversals is mirrored in ageing and in neurodegeneration. Although we identify thousands of robust associations of individual genetic polymorphisms with gene expression, we also demonstrate that there is no association between the total extent of genetic differences between subjects and the global similarity of their transcriptional profiles. Hence, the human genome produces a consistent molecular architecture in the prefrontal cortex, despite millions of genetic differences across individuals and races. To enable further discovery, this entire data set is freely available (from Gene Expression Omnibus: accession GSE30272; and dbGaP: accession phs000417.v1.p1) and can also be interrogated via a biologist-friendly stand-alone application (http://www.libd.org/braincloud).
RNA splicing is a key mechanism linking genetic variation with psychiatric disorders. Splicing profiles are particularly diverse in brain and difficult to accurately identify and quantify. We ...developed a new approach to address this challenge, combining long-range PCR and nanopore sequencing with a novel bioinformatics pipeline. We identify the full-length coding transcripts of CACNA1C in human brain. CACNA1C is a psychiatric risk gene that encodes the voltage-gated calcium channel Ca
1.2. We show that CACNA1C's transcript profile is substantially more complex than appreciated, identifying 38 novel exons and 241 novel transcripts. Importantly, many of the novel variants are abundant, and predicted to encode channels with altered function. The splicing profile varies between brain regions, especially in cerebellum. We demonstrate that human transcript diversity (and thereby protein isoform diversity) remains under-characterised, and provide a feasible and cost-effective methodology to address this. A detailed understanding of isoform diversity will be essential for the translation of psychiatric genomic findings into pathophysiological insights and novel psychopharmacological targets.
Brain development and function depend on the precise regulation of gene expression. However, our understanding of the complexity and dynamics of the transcriptome of the human brain is incomplete. ...Here we report the generation and analysis of exon-level transcriptome and associated genotyping data, representing males and females of different ethnicities, from multiple brain regions and neocortical areas of developing and adult post-mortem human brains. We found that 86 per cent of the genes analysed were expressed, and that 90 per cent of these were differentially regulated at the whole-transcript or exon level across brain regions and/or time. The majority of these spatio-temporal differences were detected before birth, with subsequent increases in the similarity among regional transcriptomes. The transcriptome is organized into distinct co-expression networks, and shows sex-biased gene expression and exon usage. We also profiled trajectories of genes associated with neurobiological categories and diseases, and identified associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms and gene expression. This study provides a comprehensive data set on the human brain transcriptome and insights into the transcriptional foundations of human neurodevelopment.
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