Single-cell mitochondrial sequencing reveals low-frequency mitochondrial mutations in naturally aging mice

Mitochondria play a crucial role in numerous biological processes; however, limited methods and research have focused on revealing mitochondrial heterogeneity at the single-cell level. In this study, we optimized the DNBelab C4 single-cell ATAC (assay for transposase-accessible chromatin) sequencing workflow for single-cell mitochondrial sequencing (C4_mtscATAC-seq). We validated the effectiveness of our C4_mtscATAC-seq protocol by sequencing the HEK-293T cell line with two biological replicates, successfully capturing both mitochondrial content (~68% of total sequencing data) and open chromatin status simultaneously. Subsequently, we applied C4_mtscATAC-seq to investigate two mouse tissues, spleen and bone marrow, obtained from two mice aged 2 months and two mice aged 23 months. Our findings revealed higher mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) content in young tissues compared to more variable mitochondrial content in aged tissues, consistent with higher activity scores of nuclear genes associated with mitochondrial replication and transcription in young tissues. We detected a total of 22, 15, and 21 mtDNA mutations in the young spleen, aged spleen, and bone marrow, respectively, with most variant allele frequencies (VAF) below 1%. Moreover, we observed a higher number of mtDNA mutations with higher VAF in aged tissues compared to young tissues. Importantly, we identified three mtDNA variations (m.9821A>T, m.15219T>C, and m.15984C>T) with the highest VAF in both aged spleen and aged bone marrow. By comparing cells with and without these mtDNA variations, we analyzed differential open chromatin status to identify potential genes associated with these mtDNA variations, including transcription factors such as KLF15 and NRF1. Our study presents an alternative single-cell mitochondrial sequencing method and provides crude insights into age-related single-cell mitochondrial variations.