Single cell RNA sequencing reveals mesenchymal heterogeneity and critical functions of Cd271 in tooth development

Accumulating evidence suggests that the maxillary process, to which cranial crest cells migrate, is essential to tooth development. Emerging studies indicate that Cd271 plays an essential role in odontogenesis. However, the underlying mechanisms have yet to be elucidated.

To establish the functionally heterogeneous population in the maxillary process, elucidate the effects of Cd271 deficiency on gene expression differences.

p75NTR knockout (Cd271^-/-) mice (from American Jackson laboratory) were used to collect the maxillofacial process tissue of p75NTR knockout mice, and the wild-type maxillofacial process of the same pregnant mouse wild was used as control. After single cell suspension, the cDNA was prepared by loading the single cell suspension into the 10x Genomics Chromium system to be sequenced by NovaSeq6000 sequencing system. Finally, the sequencing data in Fastq format were obtained. The FastQC software is used to evaluate the quality of data and CellRanger analyzed the data. The gene expression matrix is read by R software, and Seurat is used to control and standardize the data, reduce the dimension and cluster. We search for marker genes for subgroup annotation by consulting literature and database; explore the effect of p75NTR knockout on mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) gene expression and cell proportion by cell subgrouping, differential gene analysis, enrichment analysis and protein-protein interaction network analysis; understand the interaction between MSCs cells and the differentiation trajectory and gene change characteristics of p75NTR knockout MSCs by cell communication analysis and pseudo-time analysis. Last we verified the findings single cell sequencing in vitro.

We identified 21 cell clusters, and we re-clustered these into three subclusters. Importantly, we revealed the cell–cell communication networks between clusters. We clarified that Cd271 was significantly associated with the regulation of mineralization.

This study provides comprehensive mechanistic insights into the maxillary- process-derived MSCs and demonstrates that Cd271 is significantly associated with the odontogenesis in mesenchymal populations.