Cells of the adult human heart
Monika Litviňuková, Carlos Talavera-López, Henrike Maatz, Daniel Reichart, Catherine L. Worth, Eric L. Lindberg, Masatoshi Kanda, Krzysztof Polanski, Matthias Heinig, Michael Lee, Emily R. Nadelmann, Kenny Roberts, Liz Tuck, Eirini S. Fasouli, Daniel M. DeLaughter, Barbara McDonough, Hiroko Wakimoto, Joshua M. Gorham, Sara Samari, Krishnaa T. Mahbubani, Kourosh Saeb-Parsy, Giannino Patone, Joseph J. Boyle, Hongbo Zhang, Hao Zhang, Anissa Viveiros, Gavin Y. Oudit, Omer Ali Bayraktar, J. G. Seidman, Christine E. Seidman, Michela Noseda, Norbert Hubner, Sarah A. Teichmann
Abstract
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. Advanced insights into disease mechanisms and therapeutic strategies require a deeper understanding of the molecular processes involved in the healthy heart. Knowledge of the full repertoire of cardiac cells and their gene expression profiles is a fundamental first step in this endeavour. Here, using state-of-the-art analyses of large-scale single-cell and single-nucleus transcriptomes, we characterize six anatomical adult heart regions. Our results highlight the cellular heterogeneity of cardiomyocytes, pericytes and fibroblasts, and reveal distinct atrial and ventricular subsets of cells with diverse developmental origins and specialized properties. We define the complexity of the cardiac vasculature and its changes along the arterio-venous axis. In the immune compartment, we identify cardiac-resident macrophages with inflammatory and protective transcriptional signatures. Furthermore, analyses of cell-to-cell interactions highlight different networks of macrophages, fibroblasts and cardiomyocytes between atria and ventricles that are distinct from those of skeletal muscle. Our human cardiac cell atlas improves our understanding of the human heart and provides a valuable reference for future studies.
Datasets
1. All — Cells of the adult human heart
Analyze this study
Source data
https://cellxgene.cziscience.com/collections/b52eb423-5d0d-4645-b217-e1c6d38b2e72
Alias names
ERP123138
Cite this study
Litviňuková, M., Talavera-López, C., Maatz, H., Reichart, D., Worth, C.L., Lindberg, E.L., Kanda, M., Polanski, K., Heinig, M., Lee, M. and Nadelmann, E.R., 2020. Cells of the adult human heart. Nature, 588(7838), pp.466-472. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2797-4