Assessing the heterogeneity of cardiac non-myocytes and the effect of cell culture with integrative single cell analysis

Abstract

Cardiac non-myocytes comprise a diverse and crucial cell population in the heart that plays dynamic roles in cardiac wound healing and growth. Non-myocytes broadly fall into four cell types: endothelium, fibroblasts, leukocytes, and pericytes. Here we characterize the diversity of the non-myocytes in vivo and in vitro using mass cytometry. By leveraging single-cell RNA sequencing we inform the design of a mass cytometry panel. To aid in annotation of the mass cytometry datasets, we utilize data integration with a neural network. We introduce approximately 460,000[~] single cell proteomes of non-myocytes as well as 5,000[~] CD31 negative single cell transcriptomes. Using our data, as well as previously reported datasets, we characterize cardiac non-myocytes with high depth in six mice, characterizing novel surface markers (CD9, CD200, Notch3, and FolR2). Further, we find that extended cell culture promotes the proliferation of CD45+CD11b+FolR2+IAIE- myeloid cells in addition to fibroblasts.