Single nucleus multiomic atlas of human dorsal root ganglia reveals the contribution of non-neuronal cell types to pain

Abstract

Sensory neurons residing in dorsal root ganglia (DRG) transmit sensory information such as pain, itch, touch, pressure and bodily position to the central nervous system. The activity of sensory neurons is regulated by non-neuronal cell types in the DRG, including satellite glial cells (SGCs), immune cells and fibroblasts. Dysregulated gene expression in DRG cells contributes to sensory nervous system disorders such as chronic pain. Understanding the genetic underpinnings of these conditions requires dissecting transcriptional regulation in human tissue. In this study, we profiled transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility landscapes from postmortem human DRG (hDRG) samples at single-nucleus level. We demonstrate that sequencing depth significantly impacts downstream analysis, with deeper sequencing yielding more detected cells and features, improved data integration, refined clustering and annotation, and more accurate scientific interpretations. We identified nine major cell types, defined their molecular signatures, and mapped cis-regulatory landscapes. Integration of gene expression with chromatin accessibility enabled peak-gene association and transcriptional network analyses, revealing transcription factors, their target genes, regulatory elements and potential partners that cooperatively drive cell-type-specific gene expression programs. This integrative approach identified cell types, genes, and cis-regulatory regions potentially driving pain conditions. Our unbiased genome-wide analysis not only recovered known pain-related genes but also highlighted novel candidate genes and regulatory regions implicated in pain mechanisms. Importantly, our results demonstrate that non-neuronal cells, including endothelial cells, fibroblasts, macrophages, and SGCs, play critical roles in pain pathogenesis and should be investigated as therapeutic targets. One Sentence SummaryOur work provides a comprehensive single-nucleus multi-omic atlas of human dorsal root ganglia, uncovering novel cell-type-specific regulatory mechanisms and candidate therapeutic targets for pain, thereby directly advancing translational insights into human sensory disorders and chronic pain pathogenesis.