Stromal heterogeneity in the adult lung delineated by single-cell genomics

Dean Sheppard1, Tatsuya Tsukui1
1University of California, San Francisco, *Corresponding author
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Description Single-cell RNA sequencing of lineage-negative sorted stromal cells from adult human lung, 3 idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis donors and 3 normal donors. 18,966 cells over the authors' 9 stromal states: Pericyte, VSM, ASM, Ductal, Alveolar, Inflammatory, Adventitial, Peribronchial and Fibrotic. Inflammatory and Fibrotic appear in fibrosis only, and Peribronchial in normal lung only. Stromal cells in the lung provide structural support to other cells and play critical roles in inflammation, repair, and fibrosis after injury. Recent technological advancements in single-cell genomics have tremendously improved our knowledge of stromal heterogeneity in the lung. Stromal heterogeneity in single-cell RNA sequencing data is often conserved across different studies despite the different annotation strategies. Spatial analyses suggest that each stromal subset is characterized by unique anatomic locations in the adult lung. This review overviews the stromal heterogeneity delineated by single-cell RNA sequencing studies and highlights the functional characteristics and locations of each population.
Dataset ID LMEX0000090006
Assay Type Single-cell RNA-seq
Organism Human
Stages Adult
Cell Count 18966
Technology 10x Genomics Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression
Reference Tsukui and Sheppard (2025)
External databases DOI: 10.1152/ajpcell.00285.2025 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15330956
LungMAP IDAlt IDSpeciesAge GroupHealth Status
LMSPSHP0000001IPF-1Homo sapiensAdultIPF
LMSPSHP0000002IPF-2Homo sapiensAdultIPF
LMSPSHP0000003IPF-3Homo sapiensAdultIPF
LMSPSHP0000004NML-1Homo sapiensAdultNormal
LMSPSHP0000005NML-2Homo sapiensAdultNormal
LMSPSHP0000006NML-3Homo sapiensAdultNormal