A single-cell survey of Drosophila blood
- Blavatnik Institute, Harvard Medical School, United States
- Hanyang University, Republic of Korea
- Harvard T H Chan Bioinformatics Core, United States
Abstract
Drosophila blood cells, called hemocytes, are classified into plasmatocytes, crystal cells, and lamellocytes based on the expression of a few marker genes and cell morphologies, which are inadequate to classify the complete hemocyte repertoire. Here, we used single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to map hemocytes across different inflammatory conditions in larvae. We resolved plasmatocytes into different states based on the expression of genes involved in cell cycle, antimicrobial response, and metabolism together with the identification of intermediate states. Further, we discovered rare subsets within crystal cells and lamellocytes that express fibroblast growth factor (FGF) ligand branchless and receptor breathless, respectively. We demonstrate that these FGF components are required for mediating effective immune responses against parasitoid wasp eggs, highlighting a novel role for FGF signaling in inter-hemocyte crosstalk. Our scRNA-seq analysis reveals the diversity of hemocytes and provides a rich resource of gene expression profiles for a systems-level understanding of their functions.
Data availability
Sequencing data have been deposited in GEO under the accession number GSE146596Elsewhere, data can be visualized at: www.flyrnai.org/scRNA/blood/Data code can accessed at: https://github.com/hbc/A-single-cell-survey-of-Drosophila-blood
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Transcriptomic analysis of Drosophilalarval crystal cellsNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE93823.
Article and author information
Author details
Sudhir Gopal Tattikota
Michael J Steinbaugh
Funding
Samsung Science and Technology Foundation (SSTF-BA1701-15)
- Jiwon Shim
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Bruno Lemaître, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
Version history
- Received: December 30, 2019
- Accepted: May 8, 2020
- Accepted Manuscript published: May 12, 2020 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: May 19, 2020 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2020, Tattikota 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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A single-cell survey of Drosophila blood
eLife 9:e54818.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.54818
Further reading
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The brain is consisted of diverse neurons arising from a limited number of neural stem cells. Drosophila neural stem cells called neuroblasts (NBs) produces specific neural lineages of various lineage sizes depending on their location in the brain. In the Drosophila visual processing centre - the optic lobes (OLs), medulla NBs derived from the neuroepithelium (NE) give rise to neurons and glia cells of the medulla cortex. The timing and the mechanisms responsible for the cessation of medulla NBs are so far not known. In this study, we show that the termination of medulla NBs during early pupal development is determined by the exhaustion of the NE stem cell pool. Hence, altering NE-NB transition during larval neurogenesis disrupts the timely termination of medulla NBs. Medulla NBs terminate neurogenesis via a combination of apoptosis, terminal symmetric division via Prospero, and a switch to gliogenesis via Glial Cell Missing (Gcm); however, these processes occur independently of each other. We also show that temporal progression of the medulla NBs is mostly not required for their termination. As the Drosophila OL shares a similar mode of division with mammalian neurogenesis, understanding when and how these progenitors cease proliferation during development can have important implications for mammalian brain size determination and regulation of its overall function.
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Sleep and feeding patterns lack strong daily rhythms during early life. As diurnal animals mature, feeding is consolidated to the day and sleep to the night. In Drosophila, circadian sleep patterns are initiated with formation of a circuit connecting the central clock to arousal output neurons; emergence of circadian sleep also enables long-term memory (LTM). However, the cues that trigger the development of this clock-arousal circuit are unknown. Here, we identify a role for nutritional status in driving sleep-wake rhythm development in Drosophila larvae. We find that in the 2nd instar larval period (L2), sleep and feeding are spread across the day; these behaviors become organized into daily patterns by the 3rd instar larval stage (L3). Forcing mature (L3) animals to adopt immature (L2) feeding strategies disrupts sleep-wake rhythms and the ability to exhibit LTM. In addition, the development of the clock (DN1a)-arousal (Dh44) circuit itself is influenced by the larval nutritional environment. Finally, we demonstrate that larval arousal Dh44 neurons act through glucose metabolic genes to drive onset of daily sleep-wake rhythms. Together, our data suggest that changes to energetic demands in developing organisms trigger the formation of sleep-circadian circuits and behaviors.
