Single-cell multi-cohort dissection of the schizophrenia transcriptome
W. Brad Ruzicka, Shahin Mohammadi, John F. Fullard, José Dávila-Velderrain, Sivan Subburaju, Daniel Reed Tso, Makayla Hourihan, Shan Jiang, Hao-Chih Lee, Jaroslav Bendl, Georgios Voloudakis, Vahram Haroutunian, Gabriel E. Hoffman, Panos Roussos, Manolis Kellis, Schahram Akbarian, Alexej Abyzov, Nadav Ahituv, Dhivya Arasappan, José Juan Almagro Armenteros, Brian J. Beliveau, Sabina Berretta, Rahul Bharadwaj, Arjun Bhattacharya, Lucy Bicks, Kristen Brennand, Davide Capauto, Frances A. Champagne, Tanima Chatterjee, Chris Chatzinakos, Yuhang Chen, H. Isaac Chen, Yuyan Cheng, Lijun Cheng, Andrew Chess, Jo-fan Chien, Zhiyuan Chu, Declan Clarke, Ashley Clement, Leonardo Collado‐Torres, Gregory M. Cooper, Gregory E. Crawford, Rujia Dai, Nikolaos P. Daskalakis, Amy Deep‐Soboslay, Chengyu Deng, Christopher P. DiPietro, Stella Dracheva, Shiron Drusinsky, Ziheng Duan, Duc M. Duong, Cagatay Dursun, Nicholas J. Eagles, Jonathan I. Edelstein, Prashant S. Emani, Kiki Galani, Timur R. Galeev, Michael J. Gandal, Sophia C. Gaynor, Mark Gerstein, Daniel H. Geschwind, Kiran Girdhar, Fernando S. Goes, William Greenleaf, Jennifer Grundman, Hanmin Guo, Qiuyu Guo, Chirag Gupta, Yoav Hadas, Joachim Hallmayer, Xikun Han, Natalie Hawken, Chuan He, Ella Henry, Stephanie C. Hicks, Marcus Ho, Li‐Lun Ho, Yi‐Ling Huang, Louise A. Huuki-Myers, Ahyeon Hwang, Thomas M. Hyde, Artemis Iatrou, Fumitaka Inoue, Aarti Jajoo, Matthew L. Jensen, Lihua Jiang, Peng Jin, Ting Jin, Connor Jops, Alexandre Jourdon, Riki Kawaguchi, Joel E. Kleinman, Steven P. Kleopoulos, Alexey Kozlenkov, Arnold R. Kriegstein, Anshul Kundaje, Soumya Kundu, Che-Yu Lee, Donghoon Lee, Junhao Li
Abstract
The complexity and heterogeneity of schizophrenia have hindered mechanistic elucidation and the development of more effective therapies. Here, we performed single-cell dissection of schizophrenia-associated transcriptomic changes in the human prefrontal cortex across 140 individuals in two independent cohorts. Excitatory neurons were the most affected cell group, with transcriptional changes converging on neurodevelopment and synapse-related molecular pathways. Transcriptional alterations included known genetic risk factors, suggesting convergence of rare and common genomic variants on neuronal population-specific alterations in schizophrenia. Based on the magnitude of schizophrenia-associated transcriptional change, we identified two populations of individuals with schizophrenia marked by expression of specific excitatory and inhibitory neuronal cell states. This single-cell atlas links transcriptomic changes to etiological genetic risk factors, contextualizing established knowledge within the human cortical cytoarchitecture and facilitating mechanistic understanding of schizophrenia pathophysiology and heterogeneity.