Single-nucleus brain transcriptomics reveals microglia dysfunction in Multiple System Atrophy

Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) is a rare, age-related neurodegenerative disease that shares clinical and pathological features with Parkinson’s disease (PD) but presents a more devastating disease course. To elucidate the distinct cellular pathophysiology underlying multiple system atrophy (MSA) or Parkinson's disease (PD), we performed single-nucleus RNA sequencing on postmortem striatal brain tissue from 7 MSA and 12 PD patients, and 10 non-neurological cases. Using 10x Genomics Chromium Next GEM Single Cell 3' Reagent Kits v3.1, we isolated 130k nuclei covering all major cell types of the striatum. We performed state-of-the-art bioinformatic analyses on the data followed by orthogonal analyses to validate our findings. We identified a disease-specific activation of microglia cells distinguishing the two diseases and possibly explaining some of the detrimental effects observed in both.

• Type: Transcriptome Sequencing
• Archiver: European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA)