Biology subjects

Murtazina, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Murtazina, A..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

A Joint Promoterome-Proteome Atlas Highlights the Molecular Diversity of Human Skeletal Muscles

More than 600 distinct skeletal muscles constitute up to 40% of the total mass of the human body. Human skeletal muscles differ in anatomical position, morphology, origin, and function, but the diversity of their molecular phenotypes, the gene expression and protein abundance profiles, remains poorly explored. Here, we report the large-scale CAGE-Seq promoterome profiling of 75 human skeletal muscles, complemented by 22 matched proteomes obtained with mass spectrometry. We identified 37001 transcribed regulatory elements and 1804 protein groups encompassing 1895 proteins, 80% of which demonstrated non-uniform expression across different muscles. The skeletal muscles of the eye, tongue, and diaphragm had the most distinctive molecular phenotypes, while the overall diversity was driven by hundreds of transcription factors with tissue-specific activity. By analyzing the allelic imbalance of CAGE-Seq reads, we discovered 6653 allele-specific single-nucleotide variants often coinciding with muscle-related GWAS SNPs, including muscle volume. Finally, we provide an interactive online atlas of transcriptomic and proteomic molecular phenotypes, facilitating further studies of gene regulation and heritable pathologies of skeletal muscles.

genomics↗

bioRxiv2026

Single-cell, clonal and spatial atlases of cranial placodes illuminate their specification and evolution

The vertebrate head is defined by complex sensory structures derived from cranial placodes. Placodes arise alongside the neural crest at the neural plate border, yet the mechanisms governing their identity, diversification, and evolutionary origins are unclear. We present an integrated single-cell, spatial, and clonal atlas of placode development to resolve the dynamics of their lineage segregation. Combining single-cell RNA-sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, and high-resolution clonal tracing, we show that placodal and neighboring progenitors form a continuous transcriptional landscape with gradual transitions between domains. Domain boundary cells co-express markers of adjacent territories, suggesting transient bipotent states. Consistent with this, clonal analysis reveals sharing of progenitors between neighboring placodes, supporting a model of competitive segregation. Comparisons with amphioxus suggests that vertebrate olfactory placodes emerged from an ancestral neuroectoderm that later partitioned into distinct neural and olfactory domains. Our findings provide a unified framework for understanding the developmental and evolutionary origins of vertebrate sensory organs.

developmental biology↗

bioRxiv2024

Unbiased profiling of multipotency landscapes reveals spatial modulators of clonal fate biases

The proportion of cell types varies systematically across the body, but it remains unclear how individual progenitor cells integrate positional information to establish patterns of cellular composition. In this study we profile the clonal landscape of the embryo, using single-cell lineage tracing of mouse embryos from neurulation until mid-gestation. To analyze the complex clonal patterns derived from highly multipotent progenitors, we developed clone2vec, which uses unsupervised learning to categorize individual clones into lineages based on shared transcriptional context. This revealed a body-wide gradient of clonal fate biases, in which anatomical position and clonal composition are mutually predictive. Comparison of clonal lineages revealed spatial transcription factor programs associated with dynamic cell biasing towards skeletal versus non-skeletal fates. Mosaic combinatorial perturbations targeting the Hedgehog pathway generated clones in which positional identity was mismatched with clonal composition, suggesting a potential signaling influence on somite patterning. We explore the effects of position and heterochrony on fate biases in cranial, trunk, and caudal neural crest clones. Altogether, our work demonstrates an effective practical approach for dissecting mechanisms of lineage specification.

developmental biology↗