An atlas of cell types in the mammalian epididymis and vas deferens [preprint]
Authors
Rinaldi, Vera D.Donnard, Elisa
Rasmussen, Morten
Kucukural, Alper
Yukselen, Onur
Garber, Manuel
Sharma, Upasna
Rando, Oliver J.
UMass Chan Affiliations
Garber LabProgram in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology
Program in Molecular Medicine
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology
Document Type
PreprintPublication Date
2020-01-24Keywords
Developmental Biologyepididymis
sperm
epithelium
cells
Cell Biology
Cells
Developmental Biology
Reproductive and Urinary Physiology
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Following spermatogenesis in the testis, mammalian sperm continue to mature over the course of approximately 10 days as they transit a long epithelial tube known as the epididymis. The epididymis is comprised of multiple segments/compartments that, in addition to concentrating sperm and preventing their premature activation, play key roles in remodeling the protein, lipid, and RNA composition of maturing sperm. In order to understand the complex roles for the epididymis in reproductive biology, we generated a single cell atlas of gene expression from the murine epididymis and vas deferens. We recovered all the key cell types of the epididymal epithelium, including principal cells, clear cells, and basal cells, along with associated support cells that include fibroblasts, smooth muscle, macrophages and other immune cells. Moreover, our data illuminate extensive regional specialization of principal cell populations across the length of the epididymis, with a substantial fraction of segment-specific genes localized in genomic clusters of functionally-related genes. In addition to the extensive region-specific specialization of principal cells, we find evidence for functionally-specialized subpopulations of stromal cells, and, most notably, two distinct populations of clear cells. Analysis of ligand/receptor expression reveals a network of potential cellular signaling connections, with several predicted interactions between cell types that may play roles in immune cell recruitment and other aspects of epididymal function. Our dataset extends on existing knowledge of epididymal biology, and provides a wealth of information on potential regulatory and signaling factors that bear future investigation.Source
bioRxiv 2020.01.24.918979; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.24.918979. Link to preprint on bioRxiv service.
DOI
10.1101/2020.01.24.918979Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/29427Related Resources
Now published in Elife, doi: 10.7554/eLife.55474
Rights
The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.Distribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1101/2020.01.24.918979
Scopus Count
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.