Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 20, 2026

Author Spotlight: Multi-Layered Approach to Understand Postnatal Functions of Pancreatic Islets in Non-Human Primates
Published on: November 8, 2024
Dissecting dynamic expression of autophagy-related genes during human fetal digestive tract development via
Puwen Tan1,2, Yue Ren3, Yuncong Zhang4
1Department of Anesthesiology, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Chongqing Medical University , Chongqing , China.
Abstract:
Macroautophagy/autophagy has been demonstrated to play an essential role in embryonic development. However, the role of autophagy during human fetal digestive tract development has not been investigated. Here, by using over 5,000 human embryonic digestive tract cells ranging from 6 weeks to 25 weeks, we explored the dynamic expression of autophagy-related genes at single-cell resolution, and found that the transcriptional activity of autophagy-related genes boosted remarkably and specifically in the early (between 6 and 9 weeks) stages. Interestingly, the small intestine cells at 9 weeks showed the most significant enrichment of autophagy-related genes than any other stages. In summary, our results for the first time revealed that autophagy may play an essential role in the development of the digestive tract, especially for the small intestine, in early human embryos. Abbreviations: GI: gastrointestinal; S-Intes: small intestine; t-SNE: t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
03:39Preparation of Frozen Non-Human Primate Fetal Islets for Combined Single Nuclei RNA-Sequencing and ATAC-Sequencing, and Bulk Metabolomics
11:34Single-cell RNA Sequencing and Analysis of Human Pancreatic Islets
06:36Gut Isolation from Zebrafish Larvae for Single-cell RNA Sequencing
05:58Dissociation of Human and Mouse Tumor Tissue Samples for Single-cell RNA Sequencing
11:52Targeted RNA Sequencing Assay to Characterize Gene Expression and Genomic Alterations
10:34Using an Automated Cell Counter to Simplify Gene Expression Studies: siRNA Knockdown of IL-4 Dependent Gene Expression in Namalwa Cells

