Xiaocang Cao

Abstract Mucus injury associated with goblet cell (GC) depletion constitutes an early event in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Using single-cell sequencing to detect critical events in mucus dysfunction, we discover that the Kazal-type serine protease inhibitor SPINK4 is dynamically regulated in colitic intestine in parallel with disease activities.

Abstract Hepatic stellate cell is one of the major nonparenchymal cell types in liver. It has been proved the hepatic stellate cells are activated upon liver injury and produce excessive extracellular matrix to induce liver fibrosis. Single-cell RNA sequencing has been introduced to identify the subpopulations and function of hepatic stellate cells for its remarkable resolution of representation of single-cell transcriptome.

1 Introduction Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic disease with unclear pathogenesis and a repeated course and is mainly divided into Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis (Jakubczyk et al., 2020; Santana et al., 2022). The basic characteristics of IBD are abdominal pain and diarrhea, which can be complicated with colon stenosis and obstruction and tissue fibrosis and even induce colon cancer (Ullman and Itzkowitz, 2011).