Fig. 1: Single-cell atlas of injured rhesus monkey spinal cord reveals region-related cellular dynamics from proximal to distal tissues.

a Immunostaining of GFAP, MBP, and AIF1 characterizing the different responses from proximal to distal spinal cord tissues in the injured rhesus monkey at 7 days. The magnified images highlight massive myelin debris region (a1), high expression of GFAP and AIF region (a2, a6), the activated MBP⁺ signals located in the cell body of oligodendrocytes region (a3), and the spared distal regions (a4). Scale bars: 500 μm in the left panel; 100 μm in a1-a7. b TUNEL assay indicating the apoptotic cells in the proximal injured rhesus monkey spinal cord at 7 dpi. The scale labels the regions of TUNEL-positive cells. The areas in white boxes are shown at high magnification. Scale bars, 500 μm in the left panel; 100 μm in the right panel. c Schematic overview of the experiment design for single-cell sequencing of monkey spinal cord samples. Uninjured cervical (C), thoracic (T), and lumbar (L) spinal cord tissue and different regions (IA injured area, DA degenerative area, SA spared area, SL spared lumbar) of the injured spinal cord were harvested separately for single cell/nucleus sequencing at 7, 14, 30 days and 6 months post SCI. d Violin plots showing signature genes of cells in the rhesus monkey spinal cord. OLs oligodendrocytes, mono./Mϕ monocytes/macrophages. e Single-cell/nucleus atlas (UMAP plot) with 199870 high-quality cell/nucleus transcriptional profiles of intact and injured rhesus monkey spinal cord. f Split UMAP plots showing the cellular constitution of different regions in the injured rhesus monkey spinal cord. g Cell percentage dynamic of different regions in the injured rhesus monkey spinal cord.