Abstract
Neuron maturation is a critical process in neurogenesis, during which neurons gain their morphological, electrophysiological and molecular characteristics for their functions as the central components of nervous system. To better understand the molecular changes during such process, we integrated protein-protein interaction network and public single cell RNA-seq data of mature and immature neurons to identify functional modules whose activities are relevant to neuron maturation process in humans. Based on the identified modules, we further developed and validated a machine learning based metric of neuron maturity, namely neuron maturity index (NMI). This work provides new frameworks for functional module identification as well as quantifications of neuron maturity state in single neuron or purified neuron RNA-seq data.