Reviewer #1 (Public Review):
The study by Hendley et al takes advantage of duct-specific DBA-lectin expression to purify pancreatic ductal populations that were then subjected to scRNA-seq analysis. The ability to enrich for this relatively low abundant pancreatic cell population resulted in a more robust dataset that had been generated previously from whole pancreas analyses. The manuscript catalogs several different gene clusters that delineate heterogeneous subpopulations of three different pancreatic ductal subpopulations in mice: mouse pancreatic ductal cells, pancreatobiliary cells, and intra pancreatic bile duct cells. Additional comparisons of the resulting data sets with published embryonic and adult datasets is a strength of the study and allows the authors to subclassify the different ductal cell populations and facilitates the identification of potentially novel subpopulations. Pseudotime analysis also identified gene programs that led the authors to speculate the existence of an EMT axis in pancreatic ducts. Overall, the data analyses is strong, but the authors tend to draw conclusions that are not fully supported by the presented data.
The second half of this study focuses on three candidate proteins that were identified in the transcriptome analysis - Anxa3, SPP1 and Geminin. Crispr-Cas9 was used to delete each gene in an immortalized human duct cell line (HPDE). Deletion of each gene resulted in increased proliferation; SPP1 mutant cells also displayed abnormal morphology. Additional functional studies of the cell lines or in mouse models suggested a role for SPP1 in maintaining the ductal phenotype and Geminin in protecting ductal cells from DNA damage, respectively. Although the provided phenotypic analysis suggest important functional roles for these proteins, follow up studies will be required to fully understand the role of these genes in homeostatic or cancer conditions.
Strengths:
1) Enrichment of pancreatic ductal populations enhanced the robustness of the scRNA-Seq dataset
2) Quality of the sequencing data and extensive computational analysis is extremely good and more comprehensive than previously published datasets
3) Comparative analysis with existing mouse and human data sets
4) Use of human ductal cell lines and mouse models to begin to explore the function of candidate ductal genes.
Weaknesses:
1) There are many suppositions based on gene expression changes that are somewhat overstated.
2) The conclusion that there is an EMT axis in pancreatic ducts is not fully supported by the gene expression and immunofluorescence data
3) A good rationale for choosing Anxa3, SPP1 and Geminin for additional functional analysis is not provided. In addition, it isn't clear why Anxa3 function isn't pursued further.
4) Although extensive models (transplanted cells for SPP1 and mouse conditional KOs for Geminin) were generated, the functional analysis for each gene is preliminary; additional longer term studies will be necessary to fully understand the role of these proteins in pancreatic duct development and cancer.