Fokker-Planck diffusion maps of multiple single cell microglial transcriptomes reveals radial differentiation into substates associated with Alzheimer's pathology.

Publication Title

bioRxiv

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-27-2024

Keywords

washington; isb

Abstract

The identification of microglia subtypes is important for understanding the role of innate immunity in neurodegenerative diseases. Current methods of unsupervised cell type identification assume a small noise-to-signal ratio of transcriptome measurements that would produce well-separated cell clusters. However, identification of subtypes is obscured by gene expression noise, diminishing the distances in transcriptome space between distinct cell types and blurring boundaries. Here we use Fokker-Planck (FP) diffusion maps to model cellular differentiation as a stochastic process whereby cells settle into local minima, corresponding to cell subtypes, in a potential landscape constructed from transcriptome data using a nearest neighbor graph approach. By applying critical transition fields, we identify individual cells on the verge of transitioning between subtypes, revealing microglial cells in inactivated, homeostatic state before radially transitioning into various specialized subtypes. Specifically, we show that cells from Alzheimer's disease patients are enriched in a microglia subtype associated to antigen presentation and T-cell recruitment.

Clinical Institute

Neurosciences (Brain & Spine)

Specialty

Neurosciences

DOI

10.1101/2024.06.21.599924

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