Integrating Single‐Cell and Spatial Transcriptomics Reveals Heterogeneity of Early Pig Skin Development and a Subpopulation with Hair Placode Formation

Abstract

The dermis and epidermis, crucial structural layers of the skin, encompass appendages, hair follicles (HFs), and intricate cellular heterogeneity. However, an integrated spatiotemporal transcriptomic atlas of embryonic skin has not yet been described and would be invaluable for studying skin‐related diseases in humans. Here, single‐cell and spatial transcriptomic analyses are performed on skin samples of normal and hairless fetal pigs across four developmental periods. The cross‐species comparison of skin cells illustrated that the pig epidermis is more representative of the human epidermis than mice epidermis. Moreover, Phenome‐wide association study analysis revealed that the conserved genes between pigs and humans are strongly associated with human skin‐related diseases. In the epidermis, two lineage differentiation trajectories describe hair follicle (HF) morphogenesis and epidermal development. By comparing normal and hairless fetal pigs, it is found that the hair placode (Pc), the most characteristic initial structure in HFs, arises from progenitor‐like OGN+/UCHL1+ cells. These progenitors appear earlier in development than the previously described early Pc cells and exhibit abnormal proliferation and migration during differentiation in hairless pigs. The study provides a valuable resource for in‐depth insights into HF development, which may serve as a key reference atlas for studying human skin disease etiology using porcine models.

Advances and applications of biomimetic biomaterials for endogenous skin regeneration

“…It has been found that the S100A9+CD29 + CD142+ biofunctional-type WJ-MSCs subpopulation exhibited best wound repair properties in vitro and in vivo , provided a reference for future development of WJ-MSC-based cell therapy for skin endogenous regeneration [ 293 ]. A recent research depicted the development of hair follicles during embryonic life and the integrated spatiotemporal transcriptomic atlas of hair follicle development in pigs through these two technologies [ 294 ]. It is worth mentioning that the data of single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics can be efficiently processed by artificial intelligence algorithms.…”