Coopted temporal patterning governs cellular hierarchy, heterogeneity and metabolism in Drosophila neuroblast tumors

Abstract

It is still unclear what drives progression of childhood tumors. During Drosophila larval development, asymmetrically-dividing neural stem cells, called neuroblasts, progress through an intrinsic temporal patterning program that ensures cessation of divisions before adulthood. We previously showed that temporal patterning also delineates an early developmental window during which neuroblasts are susceptible to tumor initiation (Narbonne-Reveau et al., 2016). Using single-cell transcriptomics, clonal analysis and numerical modeling, we now identify a network of twenty larval temporal patterning genes that are redeployed within neuroblast tumors to trigger a robust hierarchical division scheme that perpetuates growth while inducing predictable cell heterogeneity. Along the hierarchy, temporal patterning genes define a differentiation trajectory that regulates glucose metabolism genes to determine the proliferative properties of tumor cells. Thus, partial redeployment of the temporal patterning program encoded in the cell of origin may govern the hierarchy, heterogeneity and growth properties of neural tumors with a developmental origin.

Data availability

Sequencing data have been deposited in GEO under accession codes GSE114986 and GSE114562.Codes generated for the numerical model are available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/j2j9gmyb6m.1Codes used for single-cell RNA-seq analysis are available at: https://github.com/cedricmaurange/Genovese-et-al.-2019

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Sara Genovese

    Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille, Aix Marseille University, CNRS, Marseille, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Raphaël Clément

    Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille, Aix Marseille University, CNRS, Marseille, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Cassandra Gaultier

    Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille, Aix Marseille University, CNRS, Marseille, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-6401-9163
  4. Florence Besse

    Institut de Biologie Valrose, Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, Inserm, Nice, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-4672-1068
  5. Karine Narbonne-Reveau

    Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille, Aix Marseille University, CNRS, Marseille, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Fabrice Daian

    Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille, Aix Marseille University, CNRS, Marseille, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Sophie Foppolo

    Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille, Aix Marseille University, CNRS, Marseille, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Nuno Miguel Luis

    Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille, Aix Marseille University, CNRS, Marseille, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-5438-9638
  9. Cédric Maurange

    Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille, Aix Marseille University, CNRS, Marseille, France
    For correspondence
    cedric.maurange@univ-amu.fr
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8931-1419

Funding

Fondation ARC pour la Recherche sur le Cancer (PJA20141201621)

  • Cédric Maurange

Fondation ARC pour la Recherche sur le Cancer

  • Sara Genovese

Canceropôle PACA

  • Cédric Maurange

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

  • Cédric Maurange

Aix-Marseille Université

  • Sara Genovese

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2019, Genovese 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.

Metrics

  • 4,205
    views
  • 606
    downloads
  • 35
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Sara Genovese
  2. Raphaël Clément
  3. Cassandra Gaultier
  4. Florence Besse
  5. Karine Narbonne-Reveau
  6. Fabrice Daian
  7. Sophie Foppolo
  8. Nuno Miguel Luis
  9. Cédric Maurange
(2019)
Coopted temporal patterning governs cellular hierarchy, heterogeneity and metabolism in Drosophila neuroblast tumors
eLife 8:e50375.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.50375

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.50375

Further reading

    1. Cancer Biology
    2. Immunology and Inflammation
    Sofia V Krasik, Ekaterina A Bryushkova ... Ekaterina O Serebrovskaya
    Research Article

    The current understanding of humoral immune response in cancer patients suggests that tumors may be infiltrated with diffuse B cells of extra-tumoral origin or may develop organized lymphoid structures, where somatic hypermutation and antigen-driven selection occur locally. These processes are believed to be significantly influenced by the tumor microenvironment through secretory factors and biased cell-cell interactions. To explore the manifestation of this influence, we used deep unbiased immunoglobulin profiling and systematically characterized the relationships between B cells in circulation, draining lymph nodes (draining LNs), and tumors in 14 patients with three human cancers. We demonstrated that draining LNs are differentially involved in the interaction with the tumor site, and that significant heterogeneity exists even between different parts of a single lymph node (LN). Next, we confirmed and elaborated upon previous observations regarding intratumoral immunoglobulin heterogeneity. We identified B cell receptor (BCR) clonotypes that were expanded in tumors relative to draining LNs and blood and observed that these tumor-expanded clonotypes were less hypermutated than non-expanded (ubiquitous) clonotypes. Furthermore, we observed a shift in the properties of complementarity-determining region 3 of the BCR heavy chain (CDR-H3) towards less mature and less specific BCR repertoire in tumor-infiltrating B-cells compared to circulating B-cells, which may indicate less stringent control for antibody-producing B cell development in tumor microenvironment (TME). In addition, we found repertoire-level evidence that B-cells may be selected according to their CDR-H3 physicochemical properties before they activate somatic hypermutation (SHM). Altogether, our work outlines a broad picture of the differences in the tumor BCR repertoire relative to non-tumor tissues and points to the unexpected features of the SHM process.

    1. Cancer Biology
    2. Computational and Systems Biology
    Rosalyn W Sayaman, Masaru Miyano ... Mark A LaBarge
    Research Article Updated

    Effects from aging in single cells are heterogenous, whereas at the organ- and tissue-levels aging phenotypes tend to appear as stereotypical changes. The mammary epithelium is a bilayer of two major phenotypically and functionally distinct cell lineages: luminal epithelial and myoepithelial cells. Mammary luminal epithelia exhibit substantial stereotypical changes with age that merit attention because these cells are the putative cells-of-origin for breast cancers. We hypothesize that effects from aging that impinge upon maintenance of lineage fidelity increase susceptibility to cancer initiation. We generated and analyzed transcriptomes from primary luminal epithelial and myoepithelial cells from younger <30 (y)ears old and older >55 y women. In addition to age-dependent directional changes in gene expression, we observed increased transcriptional variance with age that contributed to genome-wide loss of lineage fidelity. Age-dependent variant responses were common to both lineages, whereas directional changes were almost exclusively detected in luminal epithelia and involved altered regulation of chromatin and genome organizers such as SATB1. Epithelial expression variance of gap junction protein GJB6 increased with age, and modulation of GJB6 expression in heterochronous co-cultures revealed that it provided a communication conduit from myoepithelial cells that drove directional change in luminal cells. Age-dependent luminal transcriptomes comprised a prominent signal that could be detected in bulk tissue during aging and transition into cancers. A machine learning classifier based on luminal-specific aging distinguished normal from cancer tissue and was highly predictive of breast cancer subtype. We speculate that luminal epithelia are the ultimate site of integration of the variant responses to aging in their surrounding tissue, and that their emergent phenotype both endows cells with the ability to become cancer-cells-of-origin and represents a biosensor that presages cancer susceptibility.