An atlas of the developing human fetal spine

The primitive streak emerges during the 14th day of human development and establishes dorsoventral and antero-posterior (craniocaudal) body axes. Segmentation along the craniocaudal axis is governed by Hox genes; four clusters of transcription factors whose 3’ to 5’ expression correlates with position along the axis. The precise utilisation of Hox genes in different cell types remains incompletely characterised in humans. In this study, we applied single-cell and spatial transcriptomics to contiguous regions of the human fetal spine between the 5th and 13th post-conception weeks. We built a detailed developmental atlas to examine the segmental expression of Hox genes across different cell types, observing that the Hox code was displayed by all anatomically fixed cell types along the craniocaudal axis. By contrast, mature derivatives of neural crest cells retained the anatomical Hox code of their origin within the crest, a pattern reproduced across neural crest derivatives in other human fetal organs. These findings indicate that scars of Hox gene expression persist in crest cells which may serve as barcodes of neural crest migration.

• 1 sample
• DAC: EGAC00001000205
• Technology: Illumina NovaSeq 6000