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PARKINSON’S DISEASE

Parkinson’s disease in the single-cell era

Nature Neuroscience volume 25, pages 536–538 (2022)Cite this article

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Degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra is a pathological hallmark of Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, not all dopamine-producing neurons degenerate. Kamath, Abdulraouf et al. find that there are ten transcriptionally defined dopaminergic subpopulations in the human substantia nigra, but only one carries significant PD genetic risk and is vulnerable to neurodegeneration in PD.

Recently, with the advent of single-cell genomic methods, the complexity and diversity of DA neurons have begun to emerge. Using a gene expression array with selected genes, Poulin et al.3 identified five subtypes of DA neuron in the mouse midbrain region. These results were largely confirmed by unbiased single-cell transcriptomics, which defined seven DA neuron subpopulations, including three in the mouse SNpc4. La Manno et al.5 also performed single-cell transcriptomics on human embryonic midbrain tissue (weeks 6–11) and identified three subtypes of midbrain DA neuron. However, DA neurons in the adult human SNpc have remained less clearly defined.

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Fig. 1: Scheme of the molecular anatomy of the human substantia nigra pars compacta.

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  1. Karolinska Institutet, MBB, Molecular Neurobiology, Stockholm, Sweden

    Ernest Arenas

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  1. Ernest Arenas
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Correspondence to Ernest Arenas.

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Arenas, E. Parkinson’s disease in the single-cell era. Nat Neurosci 25, 536–538 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-022-01069-7

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