A single-cell atlas of human brain middle temporal gyrus reveals sex-specific and cell-type-specific gene expression regulation in Alzheimer’s disease

Women with AD have more extensive brain histological changes than men with AD, more severe cognitive symptoms, and more severe neurodegeneration, suggesting that the disease affects female and male brains differentially. Despite evident AD sex variance, mechanisms and pathways are still poorly understood. Thus, a focus on sex differences in AD is essential to move the field towards effective interventions and to develop sex-specific therapies. To understand the cellular heterogeneity and disease-associated cellular changes in human AD brain, we performed unbiased massively parallel single nucleus RNA sequencing with postmortem frozen human brain tissues of middle temporal gyrus, a brain cortical region strongly affected by AD. From 12 individuals with and without AD, we isolated brain nuclei by sucrose gradient ultracentrifugation, generated single nucleus libraries with 10x Chromium platform (10x Genomics), and sequenced on NovaSeq6000 S4 sequencer (Illumina). We integrated snRNA-seq data of human brains from these 12 individuals of both Alzheimer’s Disease (AD, Braak Stage V/VI, n = 6) and age-matched healthy controls (HC, Braak Stage I/II, n = 6) by single nucleus analysis using Seurat. After quality control filtering, we profiled and analyzed 64,845 single nucleus transcriptomes, clustered all the cells jointly across the 12 donors that include 6 females and 6 males, and identified and annotated the major cell types of the human brain by interrogating the expression patterns of known gene markers, including neurons, excitatory neurons, inhibitory neurons, astrocytes, microglia, oligodendrocytes, oligodendrocyte precursor cells, endothelial cells, and pericytes.