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.
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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Proteins that allow water to move in and out of cells help shape the development of new blood vessels.
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