In this session, Elisabeth Rebboah, PhD, from the Mortazavi Lab at UC Irvine, discusses her recent work on the impact of genetic diversity on cell type- and state-specific gene expression in mice.
Through an extensive study of various mouse strains and tissue types, significant diversity in gene expression profiles was uncovered. Single Cell Sequencing analysis of millions of cells revealed that different tissues exhibit varying levels of transcriptional variation due to strain differences, with specific impacts on cell types (e.g., neurons show less variation compared to glial cells and hepatocytes). Rebboah’s findings indicate that genetic diversity correlates with transcriptional variation, with wild-derived strains exhibiting the most differential expression. Additionally, while most cell types show significant variation in wild strains, at least one cell state specific to a common lab strain was identified, which is linked to a known phenotype: activated muscle stem cells in A/J mice, predisposed to muscular dystrophy.
