Single-cell transcriptome analysis of avian neural crest migration reveals signatures of invasion and molecular transitions
- Stowers Institute for Medical Research, United States
- University of Nebraska Medical Center, United States
Abstract
Neural crest cells migrate throughout the embryo, but how cells move in a directed and collective manner has remained unclear. Here, we perform the first single-cell transcriptome analysis of cranial neural crest cell migration at three progressive stages in chick and identify and establish hierarchical relationships between cell position and time-specific transcriptional signatures. We determine a novel transcriptional signature of the most invasive neural crest Trailblazer cells that is consistent during migration and enriched for approximately 900 genes. Knockdown of several Trailblazer genes shows significant but modest changes to total distance migrated. However, in vivo expression analysis by RNAscope and immunohistochemistry reveals some salt and pepper patterns that include strong individual Trailblazer gene expression in cells within other subregions of the migratory stream. These data provide new insights into the molecular diversity and dynamics within a neural crest cell migratory stream that underlie complex directed and collective cell behaviors.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Stowers Institute for Medical Research
- Paul M Kulesa
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R21NS092001)
- Paul M Kulesa
The funders had no role in data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Marianne Bronner, California Institute of Technology, United States
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All experiments were performed according to institutional (IBC-2003-23-pmk) and federal ethical standards.
Version history
- Received: May 5, 2017
- Accepted: December 2, 2017
- Accepted Manuscript published: December 4, 2017 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: December 13, 2017 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2017, Morrison et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Single-cell transcriptome analysis of avian neural crest migration reveals signatures of invasion and molecular transitions
eLife 6:e28415.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.28415
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