SFEBES2026 Oral Poster Presentations Neuroendocrinology and Pituitary (4 abstracts)
1Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research, Cologne, Germany; 2University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
The hypothalamus is a main neuroendocrine organ that plays multiple roles in orchestrating physiological functions in the body such as somatic growth, circadian rhythm, sexual reproduction and energy homeostasis. In order to better understand the cellular architecture of this brain region, we integrated single-cell sequencing data from multiple studies and released harmonised cell atlases of the mouse hypothalamus, aka HypoMap in 2022, and human HYPOMAP later in 2025 to the research community. Here we are presenting the second iteration of our mouse atlas, HypoMap3D, which has ~4X more cells and better regional coverage than its predecessor. In this version we have also included four spatial transcriptomics studies of coronal sections at 100µm intervals to reconstruct a comprehensive spatio-cellular map of the mouse hypothalamus in 3D. To demonstrate the use of this new resource, we examine the molecular and spatial heterogeneity of different hypothalamic Kisspeptin (Kiss1) neurons, which are crucial for controlling the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, and investigate sexual dimorphism of gene expression in these neurons.