ISSN: 1449-2288International Journal of Biological Sciences
Global reach, higher impact
Int J Biol Sci 2023; 19(13):4036-4051. doi:10.7150/ijbs.82844 This issue Cite
Research Paper
Single-cell transcriptomics reveals zinc and copper ions homeostasis in epicardial adipose tissue of heart failure
1. The Second Clinical College of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou 510405, Guangdong, China.
2. Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou 510120, Guangdong, China.
3. State Key Laboratory of Dampness Syndrome of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou 510120, Guangdong, China.
4. Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, 510623, Guangdong, China.
5. School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Key Laboratory of Chinese Medicinal Formulae, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou 510405, China
6. School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
*The first four authors contributed equally to this article
Abstract
Epicardial adipose tissue (EAT) is a unique visceral fat reservoir that shares an immune microenvironment without a distinct boundary with myocardium. Increasingly, visceral fat has been studied as a secondary immune organ, and EAT is no exception in this regard. Cellular subsets of EAT are associated with disease development. In heart failure (HF) patients, however, the immune characteristics of EAT have rarely been studied, especially those non-immune cells related to the immune microenvironment. Herein, an analysis of seven EAT samples by single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-Seq) is presented here, including 1 neonate, 1 infant, 1 child, 2 adults with heart failure (Adults-HF) and 2 adult heart transplant donors as non-heart failure control (Adults-Non HF). Analysis of 51730 high-quality cells revealed eleven major cell types in EAT. For the first time, the pseudo-temporal reconstruction technique was employed to plot the cell trajectories of various major cell types (such as T lymphocytes, fibroblasts, endothelial cells, monocytes, and smooth muscle cells) in EAT across different developmental stages, achieving a single-cell resolution. The dynamic gene expression patterns of major cell types presented the immune characteristics of metabolism disorder of zinc and copper ions, and downregulated immune-related pathways in EAT of adult patients with HF. These data provide insights regarding HF immune dysregulation at the cellular level.
Keywords: single-cell RNA sequencing, epicardial adipose tissue, development, heart failures, immune microenvironment
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