ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Livestock Genomics
This article is part of the Research TopicInsights in Livestock GenomicsView all 15 articles
Single-cell Transcriptome Reveals Elongation and Ossification Characteristics of Antler
Provisionally accepted
- 1Southwest Forestry University, Kunming, China
- 2Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China
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Antlers are a specialized bony appendage in mammals that exhibit the remarkable ability to periodically regenerate from the pedicles and then elongate rapidly to form bone. Previous studies have demonstrated that this intricate and precise biological process involves the coordination of multiple cell types, whose understanding is central to wide range of research areas, particularly in the investigation of bone growth and mineralization. Recent studies have shed light on the cellular composition of antler rapid elongation and regeneration. However, the differentiation trajectories between the mesenchymal and cartilage tissues of the antler tip at the single-cell resolution are still lacking. We generate a single-cell profiling of antler tip containing 11 distinct cell types. A novel transitional cell that exhibits multiple cellular characteristics was founded. The co-expression modules among diverse cell types identify a stem-cell state cell type with a common transcriptome signature, comprising mesenchymal cell, antler stem cells, and antler blastema progenitor cells, and A total of two three putative differentiation trajectories are identified for antler elongation and ossification, revealing that a stem cell like state cell has a potential to differentiate into multiple cell types, including chondroblasts, chondrocytes, mural cells, and endothelial cells. We emphasize that the antler elongation and ossification are coordinated by various cells, among which some vital ligand-receptor interaction pairs were identified that shared among the vast majority of cell types, such as CADM1/CADM1, TGFB1/TGFBR3, LGR4/RSPO3, and HLA-C/FAM3C ligand-receptor interaction pairs. Taken together, the present study provides clues for the antler rapid elongation and ossification at single-cell resolution, and offers deep insight into the differentiation process of antler.
Keywords: single-cell, Antler elongation, differentiation trajectory, Ligand-receptor interaction pairs, Antler ossification
Received: 02 Jul 2025; Accepted: 27 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Han, Han, Wang and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Heping Li, lihepinghrb2002@nefu.edu.cn
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