Integrated Single-cell Transcriptomic Atlas of Human Kidney Endothelial Cells

Kidney endothelial cells (ECs) are exposed to different microenvironmental conditions that support specific physiological processes. However, the heterogeneity of human kidney ECs has not yet been systematically described.

We reprocessed and integrated 7 datasets of human kidney control single cell/single nucleus RNA sequencing (sc/snRNAseq) datasets of >200,000 kidney cells in the same method and identified five major cell types, 29,992 of which were ECs. EC re-clustering identified 7 subgroups that differed in molecular characteristics and physiological functions, the two capillary EC types being the most distinctly different.

We confirmed that EC types in the human kidney are also highly conserved in the mouse kidney and identified endothelial marker genes that are conserved in humans and mice, as well as differentially-expressed genes between corresponding subpopulations.

We created a comprehensive reference atlas of normal human kidney ECs that provides the molecular foundation for understanding how the identity, function, and interactions of kidney ECs are altered in disease and between species.

Website Functionalities:

Dimensional Reduction allows exploration of identified cell types and gene expression visualized on a UMAP embedding graph for our dataset.

Heatmap Explorer allows exploration of gene expression per cell barcode grouped by 1 or 2 variables.