Latin America is home to a unique environment and untapped diversity
Latin America represents a unique study model given the heterogeneity and mixture between indigenous sources and other continental sources that contribute to the current population.
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This ancestry is underrepresented in current research and may harbor undiscovered population-specific expression patterns at the cellular level.
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Latin American populations are very diverse and are locally substructured, not only in their degree of continental mixing but also in their subcontinental genetic components.
A Human Cell Map of Latin America Diversity
Latin America is one of the richest regions in the world in terms of ethnic diversity and genetic mixing between indigenous and other continental ancestries. These ancestors have been underrepresented in genomic and transcriptomic studies and may harbor population-specific expression patterns that are undiscovered at the cellular level. Without high-resolution characterization of understudied Latin American populations, the development of precision medicine strategies in the region will be limited and health disparities will continue.
To address this imbalance, this network aims to build a Latin American cellular map of immune blood cells and gallbladder tissue cell types from diverse indigenous and mixed populations from seven countries in the Americas (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Latinos in the US). These data sets will be used to identify ancestry-specific RNA profiles in cis-regulatory profiles and to complement disease cohort data relevant to the local epidemiology of participating communities.
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Create a new Bionetwork for the Human Cell Atlas focused on the gallbladder tissueGallbladder samples from different ethnic groups in Chile will be collected through prophylactic cholecystectomies, with the goal of generating a complete map of healthy gallbladder cells.
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Generate single-cell RNA profiles of immune cell types in Latin American populations.Generate a complete map of gene expression of blood immune cells from various native and mixed-ancestry populations in Latin America, created through the analysis of peripheral blood samples from diverse populations.
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Create a Latin American community portal for information, training, exchange, analysis, and visualization of single-cell genomic data.The proposed portal will cover different audiences and aspects of communication, participation, and scientific training, based on scRNA-seq datasets from Latin America created during this project. It will also feature a section for data analysis through an easy-to-use web server, facilitating the scalability and reliability of data analysis workflows.
Research results shared with participating communities and society
LatinCells will be constantly generating educational and training materials related to single-cell genomics and data analysis. These materials include computational pipelines, training guidelines, and other resources to analyze, explore, and disseminate the knowledge and results generated by our initiative.
Principal Investigators
We managed to build a team made up of 100% Latin Americans, with different specialties related to: community participation and sampling; sample processing and cell biology; data analysis and bioinformatics; and advanced technological education.
Andres Moreno-Estrada, MD, PhD
Cinvestav
Mexico
Carla Gallo, MsC
Universidad Cayetano Heredia
Perú
Carlos Ortiz-Ramírez, PhD
Cinvestav
Mexico
Daniela Robles-Espinoza, PhD
UNAM
Mexico
Guillermo Barreto, PhD
Universidad del Valle
Colombia
Hugo Guerrero-Cazares, MD, PhD
Mayo Clinic
USA
Lucía Spangenberg, PhD
Institut Pasteur de Montevideo
Uruguay
Patricia A. Possik, PhD
Instituto Nacional do Câncer
Brazil
Patricia Severino, PhD
Hospital Albert Einstein
Brazil
Ricardo Verdudo, VM, PhD
Universidad de Talca
Chile
Vinicius Maracaja-Coutinho, PhD
Universidad de Chile
Chile
The LatinCells initiative is funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), through the “Ancestry Networks for the Human Cell Atlas” program.
This CZI program supports researchers to contribute healthy single-cell reference data from ancestrally diverse tissue samples to the Human Cell Atlas, with the goal of creating a more globally representative resource for understanding human health and disease.