Regulation of Endocrine Cell Alternative Splicing Revealed by Single-Cell RNA Sequencing in Type 2 Diabetes

The prevalent RNA alternative splicing (AS) underlies molecular diversity, which has been demonstrated in regulating cellular functions and diseases. However, the contribution of AS in pancreatic islets remains unclear during diabetes progression. Here, we reanalyzed the full-length single-cell RNA sequencing data from the deposited database to investigate AS regulation across human pancreatic endocrine cell types in nondiabetic (ND) and type 2 diabetes (T2D) individuals. Our analysis demonstrated the significant association between AS profiles and cell-type-specificity, which could be applied to distinguish the clustering of major endocrine cell types. Moreover, AS profiles were enabled to clearly define the mature subset of β-cells in healthy controls, which was completely lost in T2D. Further analysis revealed that RNA-binding proteins (RBPs), hnRNPs and FXR1 family proteins were predicted to induce the functional impairment of β-cells through regulating AS profiles. Finally, trajectory analysis of endocrine cells suggested the β-cell identity shift through dedifferentiation and transdifferentiation of β-cells during the progression of T2D. Together, our study provides a new mechanism for regulating β-cell functions and suggests the significant contribution of AS program during diabetes. Disclosure J. Wang: None. S. Wen: None. M. Chen: None. J. Xie: None. G. Shi: None.