A uniformly processed atlas of human brain development defines cell type-specific maturation trajectories across lifespan

Cover figure

How to explore the data

  • UMAP markers : compare a cell-type aggregate UMAP with the UMAP for any marker gene to inspect where it is expressed.
  • Maturation trajectory : Metaneighbor temporal AUROC vs age. The plot shows how transcriptionally similar a cell type is to its adult counterpart at each developmental stage; trajectories rising toward 1.0 indicate convergence on the adult state. Click any thumbnail to zoom in.
  • Gene importance & trajectories : Gene importance is the bootstrap ability of a gene to predict the developmental state of a cell type — high-importance genes are top maturation markers for that lineage. Expression over age shows the fitted gene-expression trajectory across cell types from fetal to postnatal.
  • Coexpression modules : modules are sets of co-expressed genes. The heatmap shows each module's scaled expression in each cell type for the selected window. Pick a module to see its top enriched GO BP terms and to inspect it in the next tab.
  • Module browser & gene pair : gene lists, coexpression vs age, and within / across celltype coexpression scatterplots for any gene pair.
Tip: each visualization shows a spinner while loading. Some computations (e.g. within-celltype coexpression for a gene pair) can take a few seconds the first time.
Cell-type aggregate UMAP
Gene UMAP
Maturation trajectories are Metaneighbor temporal AUROC scores: how similar each cell type is to its adult counterpart across development. Higher values indicate the cell type has converged on its adult identity.
All cell types (click to select)
Gene importance refers to the bootstrap ability of a gene to predict the developmental state of a cell type, identifying top maturation genes per cell type. Expression over age shows the fitted gene-expression trajectory across cell types and developmental age.
Maturation gene importance within cell types
Expression trajectory across cell types
Coexpression modules group genes that are co-expressed across cells. The heatmap below shows how strongly each module is expressed in each cell type for the selected age window. Cell types are ordered by the canonical taxonomy; column order is fixed across all four windows by the trimester-1 clustering, so you can compare modules across time. Use the sidebar dropdown to pick a module — the chosen column is marked with a black tick on the top bar.
GO BP enrichment (top terms for selected module)
Module table (click rows to select)
Module coexpression x age
Within-celltype coexpression Download PDF
Across-celltype coexpression + expression by celltype Download PDF