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A single-cell atlas of fibroblasts: one size does not fit all

Delineation of fibroblast heterogeneity has the potential to identify select mesenchymal populations involved in health and disease. A recent study integrated single-cell transcriptomic data to generate a fibroblast atlas of steady-state and perturbed tissues in mice and humans, showing baseline and context-specific fibroblast phenotypes between species and pathologies, including IBD.

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Fig. 1: Key organizing principles of fibroblast lineages across species in healthy and perturbed tissues.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the helpful comments by C. Fiocchi.

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Correspondence to Florian Rieder.

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Competing interests

F.R. is Consulting or Advisory Board member for Adnovate, Agomab, Allergan, AbbVie, Arena, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Celgene/BMS, CDISC, Cowen, Galmed, Genentech, Gilead, Gossamer, Guidepoint, Helmsley, Index Pharma, Jannsen, Koutif, Mestag, Metacrine, Morphic, Organovo, Origo, Pfizer, Pliant, Prometheus Biosciences, Receptos, RedX, Roche, Samsung, Surmodics, Surrozen, Takeda, Techlab, Theravance, Thetis, UCB, Ysios and 89Bio. J.W. declares no competing interests.

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Wang, J., Rieder, F. A single-cell atlas of fibroblasts: one size does not fit all. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 18, 595–596 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41575-021-00482-w

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