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Single-Cell Resolution of Individual Variation in Hypothalamic Neurons Allows Targeted Manipulation Affecting Social Motivation

GSE291295 Mus musculus (mouse) Single-cell RNA-seq 36 samples Submitted 2025/03/11 Platform GPL34290
At a glance

Single-cell RNA-seq · mouse · 36 samples

What it is
Single-cell RNA-seqGene activity measured in thousands of individual cells, so cell types can be told apart.
Organism
Mus musculus (mouse)
Samples
36 samples: 10 × Myt1l heterozygous male mouse vs 10 × Wildtype female mouse vs 10 × Wildtype male mouse vs 6 × Myt1l heterozygous female mouseGroups are read from the sample names, not from the paper. Check the list below.
Data you can get
A processed table (series matrix) and supplementary files from NCBI; the raw sequencing reads from ENA. Which of these hold counts depends on the study, so check the file list.
Paper
Single-Cell Resolution of Individual Variation in Hypothalamic Neurons Allows Targeted Manipulation Affecting Social MotivationbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025
Summary (written by the submitters)
One great challenge in neuroscience is connecting molecular and cellular phenotypes to behavioral consequences. Using social motivation as a test case, we propose that individual behavioral trait variation can be leveraged to identify novel components of social reward circuits in the brain. Specifically, we hypothesized that either proportion or molecular features of distinct neuron classes in the hypothalamus can predict individual differences in social motivation.
Read the full summary ↓
To test this, we generated high-precision single-nucleus RNA-sequencing profiles of >120,000 neurons from the hypothalamus and adjacent thalamus from 36 mice assessed for social motivation, balancing across sex and an autism-associated mutation genotype. Analysis of IEG patterns revealed that PVN Agtr1a+ neurons negatively predict social behavior. Consistent with this, FDA-approved AGTR1A antagonists increase social orienting. Next, analyzing neuronal subtype proportions as predictors of social behavior, we identified multiple neuronal populations whose relative abundance correlated with individual differences in social reward-seeking, particularly the Nxph4+ neurons of the posterior and lateral hypothalamus. Subsequent chemogenetic inhibition of these suppressed multiple aspects of social motivation. This work establishes a proof-of-principle for a new approach using single-cellsingle cell genomics to identify neural substrates for behavior and identifies cellular determinants of social motivation, which suggest therapeutic avenues for disorders with social deficits.
Published in
Single-Cell Resolution of Individual Variation in Hypothalamic Neurons Allows Targeted Manipulation Affecting Social Motivation
Sarafinovska S, Koester SK, Fang LZ et al. · bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology 2025 · PMID 40161710 · doi:10.1101/2025.03.10.642464
This dataset
Download · which file do I need?

Direct links to NCBI and ENA, no account and no request form. Pick by what you want to do: take the small processed table to look, the supplementary files to re-analyse, or the original raw data to start over.

1 · Just have a look

Processed table

The series matrix: one table of values per sample as the submitters processed it. The smallest download, and it opens in Excel or R. Start here to see what the data look like.

2 · Re-analyse it

Supplementary files

The count tables and other files the authors uploaded. Take only the samples you need, or the whole study as GSE291295_RAW.tar (it can run to tens of gigabytes).

3 · Start from the raw reads

Raw sequencing reads

The original FASTQ files, straight from the sequencer, held at ENA. Large, and you align them yourself, so only choose this if you need to re-process the study from scratch.

What the files usually look like: Single-cell studies usually ship their counts as 10x files (matrix.mtx, barcodes.tsv, features.tsv), an .h5 file, or an .rds / .h5ad object that Seurat or Scanpy can open. Look for those among the supplementary files.

Also filed as BioProject PRJNA1232789 and SRA study SRP568492. Searching any of these in the dataset finder brings you back here.

Study design
10 × Myt1l heterozygous male mouse vs 10 × Wildtype female mouse vs 10 × Wildtype male mouse vs 6 × Myt1l heterozygous female mouse

Supports a between-group comparison across 36 samples.

How we read this: 4 replicated groups read from 36 sample titles; they account for 36 of them. These groups are guessed from the sample names, not taken from the paper, so check them against the sample list below before relying on them.

Samples in this study
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Metadata from NCBI GEO, cached and refreshed periodically — the NCBI page above is authoritative. Downloads link straight to NCBI/ENA; nothing is proxied through BioTransfer.