1. Developmental Biology

Single-cell profiling coupled with lineage analysis reveals vagal and sacral neural crest contributions to the developing enteric nervous system

  1. Jessica Jacobs-Li
  2. Weiyi Tang
  3. Can Li
  4. Marianne E Bronner  Is a corresponding author
  1. California Institute of Technology, United States
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79156
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  1. Jessica Jacobs-Li
  2. Weiyi Tang
  3. Can Li
  4. Marianne E Bronner
(2023)
Single-cell profiling coupled with lineage analysis reveals vagal and sacral neural crest contributions to the developing enteric nervous system
eLife 12:e79156.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79156
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Abstract

During development, much of the enteric nervous system (ENS) arises from the vagal neural crest that emerges from the caudal hindbrain and colonizes the entire gastrointestinal tract. However, a second ENS contribution comes from the sacral neural crest that arises in the caudal neural tube and populates the post-umbilical gut. By coupling single cell transcriptomics with axial-level specific lineage tracing in avian embryos, we compared the contributions of embryonic vagal and sacral neural crest cells to the chick ENS and the associated peripheral ganglia (Nerve of Remak and pelvic plexuses). At embryonic day (E) 10, the two neural crest populations form overlapping subsets of neuronal and glia cell types. Surprisingly, the post-umbilical vagal neural crest much more closely resembles the sacral neural crest than the pre-umbilical vagal neural crest. However, some differences in cluster types were noted between vagal and sacral derived cells. Notably, RNA trajectory analysis suggests that the vagal neural crest maintains a neuronal/glial progenitor pool whereas this cluster is depleted in the E10 sacral neural crest which instead has numerous enteric glia. The present findings reveal sacral neural crest contributions to the hindgut and associated peripheral ganglia and highlight the potential influence of the local environment and/or developmental timing in differentiation of neural crest-derived cells in the developing ENS.

Data availability

Sequencing data has been deposited to GEO, accession number GSE242228

The following data sets were generated

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Author details

  1. Jessica Jacobs-Li

    Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1339-3555

  2. Weiyi Tang

    Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  3. Can Li

    Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  4. Marianne E Bronner

    Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States
    For correspondence
    mbronner@caltech.edu
    Competing interests
    Marianne E Bronner, Senior editor, eLife.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-4274-1862

Funding

National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R01DK13348)

  • Marianne E Bronner

Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (F31HD11128)

  • Jessica Jacobs-Li

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

Copyright

© 2023, Jacobs-Li 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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  1. Jessica Jacobs-Li
  2. Weiyi Tang
  3. Can Li
  4. Marianne E Bronner
(2023)
Single-cell profiling coupled with lineage analysis reveals vagal and sacral neural crest contributions to the developing enteric nervous system
eLife 12:e79156.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79156

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79156

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