Research Portal for High-Quality Single Cell RNA-Seq of Human Endocrine Cells

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a heterogeneous disease, associated with obesity and aging, with a strong genetic component. Hormones secreted from cells in the endocrine islets in the pancreas regulate blood glucose levels. Dysfunction of these cells is a hallmark of T2D. There is a surge in the availability of single-cell transcriptional data from human islets providing a deeper understanding of cellular heterogeneity and function. However, analysis of this data is still challenging due to its volume, variable quality and computational know-how required to ask even the simplest question.

To bridge this gap, we analyzed single-cell RNA-seq data obtained from the human pancreas analysis program database (HPAP) performed with the 10x genomics platform. Of the 48 donors, 31 were healthy and 17 were diagnosed with T2D. Donors vary in their BMI, age, HbA1c levels, ethnicity and sex. We extracted high-quality transcriptomes of 34,259 endocrine cells and annotated them. The data can be probed by a web interface we designed, that enables visualization of gene expression patterns according to cell types and meta-data of the donors. We further integrated tools to identify differentially expressed genes and pathways across cell types and conditions. We are extending the dataset to include endocrine cells from other organs such as the gastrointestinal tract and pituitary gland to facilitate research in endocrinology and make high-quality data and bioinformatic tools accessible for biological research.