Research Abstract

A pair of kidneys filtrate and regulate solutes present on the blood through homeostasis. These crucial functionalities for a healthy body rely on the kidney's functional unit, the nephrons, of which comprises approximately 1 million per kidney. It is believed that the development of the nephron in humans extends until late fetal developmental stages before or briefly after the birth. Although the kidney is composed of various types of cells, the nephron progenitor cells (NPCs), serve as signaling agents during nephrogenesis and have the capability of regeneration and differentiation during fetal development. NPCs and nephrons have been linked to kidney diseases but there is still limited information about NPCs feature roles at different developmental stages. The acquisition of NPCs single cell RNA sequencing public datasets will allow the comparison to the laboratory’s unpublished data to determine key features at early and late development stages. Quality control assessment will filter undesired doublets, empty droplets and high count of mitochondrial genes in the datasets to be able to perform a temporal comparative analysis between each. The comparative essays will determine whether the four datasets to be utilized share important features or possess factors specific to each developmental stage.