Single-Cell Transcriptomics Reveals the Cellular Heterogeneity of Cardiovascular Diseases

Fu, Mengxia; Song, Jiangping

“A world in a wild flower, and a bodhi in a leaf,” small cells contain huge secrets. The vasculature is composed of many multifunctional cell subpopulations, each of which is involved in the occurrence and development of cardiovascular diseases. Single-cell transcriptomics captures the full picture of genes expressed within individual cells, identifies rare or de novo cell subpopulations, analyzes single-cell trajectory and stem cell or progenitor cell lineage conversion, and compares healthy tissue and disease-related tissue at single-cell resolution. Single-cell transcriptomics has had a profound effect on the field of cardiovascular research over the past decade, as evidenced by the construction of cardiovascular cell landscape, as well as the clarification of cardiovascular diseases and the mechanism of stem cell or progenitor cell differentiation. The classification and proportion of cell subpopulations in vasculature vary with species, location, genotype, and disease, exhibiting unique gene expression characteristics in organ development, disease progression, and regression. Specific gene markers are expected to be the diagnostic criteria, therapeutic targets, or prognostic indicators of diseases. Therefore, treatment of vascular disease still has lots of potentials to develop. Herein, we summarize the cell clusters and gene expression patterns in normal vasculature and atherosclerosis, aortic aneurysm, and pulmonary hypertension to reveal vascular heterogeneity and new regulatory factors of cardiovascular disease in the use of single-cell transcriptomics and discuss its current limitations and promising clinical potential.