A Single Cell RNA Sequence Atlas of the Early Drosophila Larval Eye

Authors

Komal Kumar Bollepogu Raja
Kelvin Yeung
Yumei Li
Rui Chen
Graeme Mardon

Publication Date

6-19-2024

Journal

BMC Genomics

DOI

10.1186/s12864-024-10423-x

PMID

38890587

PMCID

PMC11186242

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

6-29-2024

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Post-print

Published Open-Access

yes

Keywords

Animals, Larva, Eye, Single-Cell Analysis, Gene Expression Profiling, Transcriptome, Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental, Drosophila, Drosophila melanogaster, Sequence Analysis, RNA, Drosophila eye, Single cell genomics, Eye disc single cell RNA, Drosophila single cell omics

Abstract

The Drosophila eye has been an important model to understand principles of differentiation, proliferation, apoptosis and tissue morphogenesis. However, a single cell RNA sequence resource that captures gene expression dynamics from the initiation of differentiation to the specification of different cell types in the larval eye disc is lacking. Here, we report transcriptomic data from 13,000 cells that cover six developmental stages of the larval eye. Our data show cell clusters that correspond to all major cell types present in the eye disc ranging from the initiation of the morphogenetic furrow to the differentiation of each photoreceptor cell type as well as early cone cells. We identify dozens of cell type-specific genes whose function in different aspects of eye development have not been reported. These single cell data will greatly aid research groups studying different aspects of early eye development and will facilitate a deeper understanding of the larval eye as a model system.

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