Insights into the Biology of Hearing and Deafness Revealed by Single-Cell RNA Sequencing

The goal of this study was to isolate individual cochlear hair cells and supporting cells from wild type animals in order to characterize the transcriptome of functionally mature auditory hair cells in the mammalian cochlea. Overall design: Single-cell RNA sequencing is a powerful tool by which to characterize the transcriptional profile of low-abundance cell types, however its application to the inner ear has been hampered by the bony labyrinth, tissue sparsity and difficulties in dissociating the ultra-rare cells of the membranous cochlea.  Herein, we present a method to isolate individual inner hair cells (IHCs), outer hair cells (OHCs) and Deiters' cells (DCs) from the murine cochlea at any post-natal time point. We isolated of 132 single cells from OHC, IHC, and DC cell types at postnatal day 15 (p15) and performed RNA-Sequencing of these cells using smartseq2 and Illumina HiSeq. An additional 12 single OHCs from the same timepoint were isolated and sequenced using smartseq2 and the Nanopore MinION 1D reads. We leverage single-cell RNA sequencing to analyze these three cell types and generate a multidimensional overview of their transcriptomes. The data provide new insights into OHC motility and the architecture of gene products implicated in hereditary hearing loss. This refined view of transcription in the organ of Corti will enhance to our understanding of the biology of hearing and deafness.

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Ranum PT, Goodwin AT, Yoshimura H, Kolbe DL, Walls WD, Koh JY, He DZZ, Smith RJH