Multimodal single-cell epigenomic and 3D genome atlas of the human basal ganglia.

A multimodal single-cell atlas of human basal ganglia maps DNA methylation (261,331 nuclei) and 3D chromatin contacts (229,286 nuclei) across eight subregions.

• Why it matters: Cell-type-resolved epigenomic and 3D genome resources for the human basal ganglia are limited, limiting mechanistic interpretation of motor, reward, and disease biology.
• What they did: The study harmonized single-nucleus methylation and 3D chromatin conformation data under a BG consensus taxonomy, integrated regulatory layers, and built integrative gene regulatory networks to predict enhancer–promoter interactions.
• The result: It identifies millions of differentially methylated regions linked to disease-associated heritability, including GRN-nominated regulatory mechanisms for Parkinson’s disease risk variants at SNCA, and validates neuronal subtypes with MERFISH plus cross-species Patch-seq.

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