A single-cell atlas of the developing Drosophila ovary identifies follicle stem cell progenitors
- Department of Cell Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, New York 10016, USA
- Corresponding authors: ruth.lehmann{at}med.nyu.edu, maija.slaidina{at}med.nyu.edu
-
↵1 These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract
Addressing the complexity of organogenesis at a system-wide level requires a complete understanding of adult cell types, their origin, and precursor relationships. The Drosophila ovary has been a model to study how coordinated stem cell units, germline, and somatic follicle stem cells maintain and renew an organ. However, lack of cell type-specific tools have limited our ability to study the origin of individual cell types and stem cell units. Here, we used a single-cell RNA sequencing approach to uncover all known cell types of the developing ovary, reveal transcriptional signatures, and identify cell type-specific markers for lineage tracing. Our study identifies a novel cell type corresponding to the elusive follicle stem cell precursors and predicts subtypes of known cell types. Altogether, we reveal a previously unanticipated complexity of the developing ovary and provide a comprehensive resource for the systematic analysis of ovary morphogenesis.
Keywords
- Drosophila
- gene expression signature
- single-cell RNA sequencing
- cluster analysis
- lineage analysis
- ovary development
Footnotes
-
Supplemental material is available for this article.
-
Article published online ahead of print. Article and publication date are online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.330464.119.
-
Freely available online through the Genes & Development Open Access option.
- Received July 7, 2019.
- Accepted December 2, 2019.
This article, published in Genes & Development, is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.