Single Cell Multiome Atlas of the Human Fetal Retina

As the light-sensing part of the visual system, the retina is comprised of five classes of neurons, including photoreceptors, horizontal, amacrine, bipolar, and retinal ganglion cells, along with several non-neuronal cell types such as Muller glia. These major cell classes can be further classified into hundreds of distinct cell subtypes. The development of the retina is under tight temporal control where multipotent progenitor cells differentiate into specific mature cell types in a sequential, but overlapping, order. Additionally, the developmental process is under tight spatial control, with cells at the central retina developing earlier than cells at the periphery. To provide a comprehensive view of the human fetal retina at the molecular level and investigate transcriptional regulatory mechanisms controlling the differentiation process, we profiled more than 300,000 single nuclei of the human fetal retina from 12 donors spanning post conception week 10 and 23 with Multiome RNA-seq and ATAC-seq.