Identification of epilepsy-associated neuronal subtypes and gene expression underlying epileptogenesis

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 11; no. 1; pp. 5038 - 19
• Main Authors: Pfisterer, Ulrich, Petukhov, Viktor, Demharter, Samuel, Meichsner, Johanna, Thompson, Jonatan J., Batiuk, Mykhailo Y., Asenjo-Martinez, Andrea, Vasistha, Navneet A., Thakur, Ashish, Mikkelsen, Jens, Adorjan, Istvan, Pinborg, Lars H., Pers, Tune H., von Engelhardt, Jakob, Kharchenko, Peter V., Khodosevich, Konstantin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 07.10.2020; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 14/32; 38/91; 631/378/1689/178; 631/378/340; 631/61/514/1949; Adolescent; Adult; Biopsy; Case-Control Studies; Cell Nucleus - genetics; Cell Nucleus - metabolism; Circuits; Datasets as Topic; Drug Resistant Epilepsy - diagnosis; Drug Resistant Epilepsy - genetics; Drug Resistant Epilepsy - pathology; Drug Resistant Epilepsy - surgery; Epilepsy; Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe - diagnosis; Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe - genetics; Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe - pathology; Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe - surgery; Female; Gene expression; Genes; Glutamate receptors; Glutamic Acid - metabolism; Human performance; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Interneurons; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Microdissection; Middle Aged; Models, Genetic; multidisciplinary; Nerve Net - metabolism; Nerve Net - pathology; Neural coding; Neurological diseases; Neurons - cytology; Neurons - metabolism; Neurons - pathology; Pathophysiology; Phenotypes; Receptors; Receptors, AMPA - genetics; Receptors, AMPA - metabolism; Receptors, Glutamate - genetics; Receptors, Glutamate - metabolism; RNA-Seq; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Seizures; Signal Transduction - genetics; Single-Cell Analysis; Temporal lobe; Temporal Lobe - cytology; Temporal Lobe - diagnostic imaging; Temporal Lobe - pathology; Temporal Lobe - surgery; Transcription; Transcription, Genetic; Transcriptome - genetics; Up-Regulation; Young Adult; α-Amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole propionic acid; α-Amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole propionic acid receptors; γ-Aminobutyric acid
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18752-7

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders, yet its pathophysiology is poorly understood due to the high complexity of affected neuronal circuits. To identify dysfunctional neuronal subtypes underlying seizure activity in the human brain, we have performed single-nucleus transcriptomics analysis of >110,000 neuronal transcriptomes derived from temporal cortex samples of multiple temporal lobe epilepsy and non-epileptic subjects. We found that the largest transcriptomic changes occur in distinct neuronal subtypes from several families of principal neurons (L5-6_Fezf2 and L2-3_Cux2) and GABAergic interneurons (Sst and Pvalb), whereas other subtypes in the same families were less affected. Furthermore, the subtypes with the largest epilepsy-related transcriptomic changes may belong to the same circuit, since we observed coordinated transcriptomic shifts across these subtypes. Glutamate signaling exhibited one of the strongest dysregulations in epilepsy, highlighted by layer-wise transcriptional changes in multiple glutamate receptor genes and strong upregulation of genes coding for AMPA receptor auxiliary subunits. Overall, our data reveal a neuronal subtype-specific molecular phenotype of epilepsy. The pathophysiology of epilepsy is unclear. Here, the authors present single-nuclei transcriptomic profiling of human temporal lobe epilepsy from patients. They identified epilepsy-associated neuronal subtypes, and a panel of dysregulated genes, predicting neuronal circuits contributing to epilepsy.