Spatial transcriptomics reveals organizational properties of the mouse spinal cord and alterations in neuropathic pain.

Spatially resolved single-cell transcriptomics in adult mouse spinal cord maps distinct laminar and spatial distributions of neuronal subtypes, including axial level and sex-specific differences.

• Why it matters: The spinal cord’s circuits integrate sensory and motor functions, but their organizational logic and connectivity patterns are hard to infer from bulk or non-spatial data.
• What they did: Adult mouse spinal cord was profiled with spatially resolved single-cell transcriptomics to quantify lamina-specific somatic proximities and to assess predicted neuropeptide and ligand–receptor cell-cell communication motifs.
• The result: In a neuropathic pain model, several neuronal subtypes show altered transcriptomic states and predicted cell-cell communications, enabling circuit-level hypotheses for somatosensory and motor mechanisms in disease.

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