Kavli Affiliate: Donald Geman, Laurent Younes
| Authors: Kun Yang, Koko Ishizuka, Zui Narita, Yukiko Y Lema, Siwei Zhang, Jubao Duan, Laurent Younes, Donald Geman, Andrew P Lane and Akira Sawa
| Summary:
ABSTRACT Biopsy is an essential procedure of clinical medicine in which we obtain tissues and cells that are supposed to directly reflect pathological changes of each disease. Biopsy from the brain is difficult at both practical and ethical levels. Nasal biopsy that captures tissues with olfactory neurons has been considered as an alternative method of obtaining neurons from living patients with brain disorders. However, insufficient characterization of biopsied cells/tissues has hampered a wider use of nasal tissues as surrogate resources for the brain. By conducting single cell and bulk RNA-sequence analysis of olfactory neuronal cells (ONCs) enriched from nasal biopsied tissues and using multiple pubic datasets in comparison, we now report precise characterization of ONCs at the molecular levels. These cells are easily and reproducibly prepared and have two major strengths. They are homogeneous and neuronal, resembling excitatory neurons in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex in molecular signatures. Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.