The Pig Single Cell RNA Atlas (PCA) database is created to facilitate the application of pigs in biomedical research and applications. Pigs have been used as large animals for modelling human diseases, testing and development of treatments. Recently, there are growing interests in using genetically modified pigs for human organ transplantation. And breakthroughs in kidney and heart transplantation have been achieved. However, it is yet to fully understand the cellular compositions and similarity between pig and human organs. Other remaining challenges such as chronic immune rejections are still the major challenges to be overcome. The PCA is thus created as a fully open access resource to facilitate the understanding of cell and organ functions in pigs using single cell RNA sequencing.

In the new release PCA v.2023.1, new single nuclei RNA sequencing data from PigGTEx project in incorporated. Tissue markers and cell type markers are updated based on new integrated data in our PCA new release.

In the new release PCA v.2022.2, new features have been added to the database. Search of top 50 markers for each tissue and single cell type is included. New single cell RNA sequencing data from a study of pig Ileum development is incorporated in our PCA new release.

In the previous release of PCA (v.2022.1), we have performed single cell and single nucleic RNA sequencing of 20 tissues (from 10 major organs). The composition of cell types within tissues/organs is annotated according to the expression of cell type-specific markers. An interactive database is created, allowing free exploration of cell type specific gene expression, co-expression analysis, generation of various gene expression plots, and analysis of tissue and cell type specific gene expression.

The PCA consortium will bi-annually update the database through the integration of both published single cell RNA sequencing datasets and datasets generated by PCA.

Please cite the PCA as:

Fei Wang, Peiwen Ding, Xue Liang, Xiangning Ding, Camilla Blunk Brandt,Evelina Sjostedt, Jiacheng Zhu, Saga Bolund, Lijing Zhang, Laura P. M. H. de Rooij, Lihua Luo, Yanan Wei, Wandong Zhao, Zhiyuan Lv, Janos Hasko, Runchu Li, Qiuyu Qin, Yi Jia, Wendi Wu, Yuting Yuan, Mingyi Pu, Haoyu Wang, Aiping Wu, Lin Xie, Ping Liu, Fang Chen, Jacqueline Herold, Joanna Kalucka, Max Karlsson, Xiuqing Zhang, Rikke Bek Helmig, Linn Fagerberg, Cecilia Lindskog, Fredrik Ponten, Mathias Uhlen, Lars Bolund, Niels Jessen, Hui Jiang, Xun Xu, Huanming Yang, Peter Carmeliet, Jan Mulder, Dongsheng Chen, Lin Lin, Yonglun Luo. Nature Communications volume 13, Article number: 3620 (2022)

Contact:

Yonglun Luo (Alun), Ph.D., Associate Professor

Group leader, Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University

The Lars Bolund Institute of Regenerative Medicine, BGI-Qingdao

Chair of the Pig Cell Atlas (PCA) consortium

Email: alun@biomed.au.dk

Address: Building 1116-152, Hoegh-Guldbergs Gade 10, 8000 Aarhus