@article {Breschi857169, author = {Alessandra Breschi and Manuel Mu{\~n}oz-Aguirre and Valentin Wucher and Carrie A. Davis and Diego Garrido-Mart{\'\i}n and Sarah Djebali and Jesse Gillis and Dmitri D. Pervouchine and Anna Vlasova and Alexander Dobin and Chris Zaleski and Jorg Drenkow and Cassidy Danyko and Alexandra Scavelli and Ferran Reverter and Michael P. Snyder and Thomas R. Gingeras and Roderic Guig{\'o}}, title = {A limited set of transcriptional programs define major cell types}, elocation-id = {857169}, year = {2020}, doi = {10.1101/857169}, publisher = {Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory}, abstract = {We have produced RNA sequencing data for a number of primary cells from different locations in the human body. The clustering of these primary cells reveals that most cells in the human body share a few broad transcriptional programs, which define five major cell types: epithelial, endothelial, mesenchymal, neural and blood cells. These act as basic components of many tissues and organs. Based on gene expression, these cell types redefine the basic histological types by which tissues have been traditionally classified. We identified genes whose expression is specific to these cell types, and from these genes, we estimated the contribution of the major cell types to the composition of human tissues. We found this cellular composition to be a characteristic signature of tissues, and to reflect tissue morphological heterogeneity and histology. We identified changes in cellular composition in different tissues associated with age and sex and found that departures from the normal cellular composition correlate with histological phenotypes associated to disease.One Sentence Summary A few broad transcriptional programs define the major cell types underlying the histology of human tissues and organs.}, URL = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/11/857169}, eprint = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/11/857169.full.pdf}, journal = {bioRxiv} }