Brain-wide and cell-specific transcriptomic insights into MRI-derived cortical morphology in macaque monkeys

• Published in: Nature communications 2023-03, Vol.14 (1), p.1499-1499, Article 1499
• Main Authors: Bo, Tingting, Li, Jie, Hu, Ganlu, Zhang, Ge, Wang, Wei, Lv, Qian, Zhao, Shaoling, Ma, Junjie, Qin, Meng, Yao, Xiaohui, Wang, Meiyun, Wang, Guang-Zhong, Wang, Zheng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 38/91; 49/1; 49/90; 59/57; 631/378/116; 631/378/2583; Animal models; Animals; Brain; Brain - metabolism; Cytology; Datasets; Frontal lobe; Gene expression; Gene sequencing; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Macaca fascicularis - genetics; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Medical imaging; Monkeys & apes; Morphometry; multidisciplinary; Neuroimaging; Non-coding RNA; Oligodendrocytes; Phenotypes; Primates; Primates - genetics; Ribonucleic acid; RNA; RNA - metabolism; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); snRNA; Transcriptome; Transcriptomics
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-37246-w

Integrative analyses of transcriptomic and neuroimaging data have generated a wealth of information about biological pathways underlying regional variability in imaging-derived brain phenotypes in humans, but rarely in nonhuman primates due to the lack of a comprehensive anatomically-defined atlas of brain transcriptomics. Here we generate complementary bulk RNA-sequencing dataset of 819 samples from 110 brain regions and single-nucleus RNA-sequencing dataset, and neuroimaging data from 162 cynomolgus macaques, to examine the link between brain-wide gene expression and regional variation in morphometry. We not only observe global/regional expression profiles of macaque brain comparable to human but unravel a dorsolateral-ventromedial gradient of gene assemblies within the primate frontal lobe. Furthermore, we identify a set of 971 protein-coding and 34 non-coding genes consistently associated with cortical thickness, specially enriched for neurons and oligodendrocytes. These data provide a unique resource to investigate nonhuman primate models of human diseases and probe cross-species evolutionary mechanisms. A comprehensive anatomically-defined atlas of brain transcriptomics in macaques is still lacking. Here, the authors generate complementary bulk RNA-seq and snRNA-seq datasets from cynomolgus macaques to examine the link between brain-wide gene expression and regional variation in morphometry.