Scientist Stories: Jens Hjerling Leffler, Single cell RNA sequencing in Psychiatric Disorders

10 Sept 2024 · 35 min
35:11

In this lecture, Prof. Jens Hjerling Leffler discusses how single‑cell RNA‑sequencing (scRNA‑seq) can be combined with genome‑wide association study (GWAS) data to illuminate the cellular basis of psychiatric disorders, especially schizophrenia. He begins by framing neuronal diversity as a hierarchy between the extremes of uniform “gray spheres” and the opposite “rainbow mouse” view, advocating an “informed reductionism” that selects a biologically meaningful level of analysis. He recounts early work profiling GABAergic interneurons using the first large‑scale scRNA‑seq studies (2015) and the evolution of sequencing chemistries (Smart‑Seq, 10x, etc.). The core methodological contribution is a pipeline that merges GWAS risk loci with cell‑type‑specific expression using two statistical approaches—MAGMA and LD‑score regression—applied to specificity deciles of gene expression. This reveals that schizophrenia heritability is enriched in a limited set of neuronal classes: cortical pyramidal cells, hippocampal pyramidal cells, striatal medium spiny neurons, and cortical GABAergic interneurons, while other cell types (oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, dopaminergic neurons) show little signal. He highlights methodological caveats: treating individual cells as replicates inflates significance, the bias introduced by using nuclei versus whole cells (loss of dendritic/axonal transcripts enriched for disease risk), and the reliance on mouse data to annotate human GWAS. He then describes a massive mouse nervous‑system atlas (≈800 k cells) that confirms the original neuronal enrichment but adds a broader panneuronal component and allows cross‑trait analyses, showing psychiatric disorders cluster on similar neuronal cell types whereas vascular or microglial disorders (stroke, migraine, Alzheimer’s) target non‑neuronal cells. An unexpected finding is a strong oligodendrocyte signal in Parkinson’s disease, validated by bulk‑tissue data. The talk concludes with a call for cautious interpretation of early scRNA‑seq studies, the need for better statistical frameworks, improved annotation of non‑coding variants, and the potential of integrating cell‑type‑specific risk into personalized genetics. He invites human geneticists to collaborate.

Chapters

More from Joshua

youtube.com

Scientist Stories: Jennifer Doudna, The Code Breaker

10mo ago
youtube.com

Founder Stories: Helmy Eltoukhy, Founder & CEO of Guardant Health

1y ago
youtube.com

Scientist Stories: Fabian Theis, Machine Learning and Systems Biology

2y ago
youtube.com

Scientist Stories: Thomas Lanyon-Hogg, Chemical Biology in Drug Discovery

2y ago
youtube.com

Founder Stories: Bobby Gaspar, Manufacturing Hematopoietic Stem Cells

2y ago
youtube.com

Scientist Stories: Dana Pe'er, Single-Cell Gene Regulation

2y ago
youtube.com

Scientist Stories: Hans Waterham, The value of phenotypic assays in peroxisomal disorders

2y ago
youtube.com

Scientist Stories: Michael Rosenblum, Exploring Regulatory T-Cells

2y ago
youtube.com

Scientist Stories: Hannah Mitchison, Expanding Ciliopathies

2y ago
youtube.com

Scientist Stories: Leonardo Ferreira, Engineered Immune Cell Therapies

2y ago
youtube.com

Scientist Stories: Joel Zlotogora, Genetic carrier screening programs for reproductive purposes

2y ago
See all content