An NIH-funded partnership called the PsychAD Consortium has published the largest single-cell map of the human prefrontal cortex, drawing on sequencing data from more than six million cells from nearly 1,500 people. The findings appear across eight studies, including three papers in Nature, and detail gene activity in neurons, immune cells and vascular cells in this brain region tied to planning and emotional regulation.
nature.com
· 2026-09-23
A multi-institution research effort combined brain tissue samples from the Mount Sinai NIH Neurobiobank, the NIMH-IRP Human Brain Collection Core, and the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center to create a harmonized dataset spanning over 1,400 samples. The team standardized clinical measures such as neuritic plaque density (CERAD scores) and cognitive impairment ratings across the different cohorts, alongside demographic and technical variables like age, sex, ancestry and postmortem interval, to enable consistent single-cell transcriptomic analysis of brain disorders.
nature.com
· 2026-09-23
Researchers analyzed prefrontal cortex tissue from 284 neurotypical donors aged 0 to 97, drawn from the NIMH HBCC and Mount Sinai NIH Neurobiobank collections, to build a single-cell transcriptomic atlas. Donors were screened using neuropathology criteria such as CERAD and Braak scores to exclude Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and cognitive impairment, and were grouped into developmental, young, middle and late adulthood categories.
nature.com
· 2026-09-23
Cell biologist Junyue Cao of Rockefeller University argues that aging follows a structured, stepwise progression rather than being simple molecular wear and tear. Using single-cell genomic tools to track aging in mice across the body, his lab identified distinct stages marked by shifts in molecular signals and cell populations, resembling phases of embryonic development. Cao suggests this programmed decline likely starts before age 30 in humans.
quantamagazine.org
· 2026-09-22
The provided text is a bibliography of academic papers and preprints on computational and AI-based approaches to modeling cells, including foundation models for single-cell biology, perturbation prediction, and optimal transport methods for tracking cellular dynamics. It compiles work from research groups building toward what scientists call a 'virtual cell'—computational systems that simulate how cells respond to genetic or chemical changes. No new announcement, product, or specific finding is presented; it is purely a citation list.
nature.com
· 2026-09-09
Researchers led by Nikolai Slavov, Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz and Tsui-Fen Chou used single-cell proteomics to analyze the two earliest daughter cells formed after a fertilized mammalian egg divides. They found that these 'alpha' and 'beta' cells already carry distinct protein profiles linked to different developmental fates, with beta cells more often producing viable embryos while alpha cells tend to form supporting extra-embryonic tissue. The team traced these differing identities back to the moment of fertilization.
nature.com
· 2026-09-07
Malva is a search system that lets scientists query massive single-cell and spatial transcriptomic datasets using gene names, DNA sequences, or plain-language descriptions like 'cells expressing markers of neurodegeneration.' It combines a language model, a k-mer-based search index, and a metadata service to return annotated cell results in formats compatible with common analysis tools such as scanpy.
nature.com
· 2026-08-26
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