Our single cell and spatial atlas of the developing human thymus is now out in Nature as part of the Human Cell Atlas paper collection.
This is the result of a fantastic collaboration with the labs of Sarah Teichmann (Wellcome Sanger Institute) and Ron Germain (NIAID, NIH).
Using spatial transcriptomics, high-plex protein imaging and multimodal single cell data we studied the spatial trajectories of maturing thymocytes in fetal and postnatal human thymi. These turned out to be remarkably stable from as early as the 2nd trimester of gestation but showed interesting differences in the migratory kinetics of CD4+ and CD8+ lineage thymocytes. We also pinpointed the tissue niches of TEC progenitors, which partially differed between pre- and postnatal thymus, and explored the spatial relationship of specialised TECs with medullary Hassall’s Corpuscles.
The atlas comes with a vast resource of tools and data. You can explore the Visium spatial transcriptomics and scRNA-seq data on cellxgene. Also check out our Shiny app for interactive visualisation of our thymocyte CITE-seq data.