The tubules are wrapped by muscle-like ‘myoid’ cells.
Within the seminiferous tubules, there is a population of somatic cells (Sertoli). Adult testis are comprised of germ cells (spermatogonia, primary spermatocytes, secondary spermatocytes, spermatids and spermatozoa) and somatic cells. Mapping cellular diversity in the adult testis using single-cell expression profiling. Analysis of SDA components also led us to identify a rare population of macrophages within the seminiferous tubules of Mlh3 -/- and Hormad1 -/- mice, an area typically associated with immune privilege. We identify, de novo, DNA sequence motifs associated with individual components that define temporally varying modes of gene expression control.
By jointly analyzing mutant and wild-type cells we decomposed our data into 46 components that identify novel meiotic gene-regulatory programs, mutant-specific pathological processes, and technical effects, and provide a framework for imputation. Here we introduce a model-based factor analysis method, SDA, to analyze a novel 57,600 cell dataset from the testes of wild-type mice and mice with gonadal defects due to disruption of the genes Mlh3, Hormad1, Cul4a or Cnp. To fully exploit the potential of single-cell functional genomics in the study of development and disease, robust methods are needed to simplify the analysis of data across samples, time-points and individuals.