Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Biological Sciences, Atlanta, GA, United States.
New York University, Department of Biology, New York, NY, United States.
Dev Biol. 2019 Apr 15;448(2):226-236. doi: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2018.09.023. Epub 2018 Oct 28.
The tadpole-type larva of Ciona has emerged as an intriguing model system for the study of neurodevelopment. The Ciona intestinalis connectome has been recently mapped, revealing the smallest central nervous system (CNS) known in any chordate, with only 177 neurons. This minimal CNS is highly reminiscent of larger CNS of vertebrates, sharing many conserved developmental processes, anatomical compartments, neuron subtypes, and even specific neural circuits. Thus, the Ciona tadpole offers a unique opportunity to understand the development and wiring of a chordate CNS at single-cell resolution. Here we report the use of single-cell RNAseq to profile the transcriptomes of single cells isolated by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) from the whole brain of Ciona robusta (formerly intestinalis Type A) larvae. We have also compared these profiles to bulk RNAseq data from specific subsets of brain cells isolated by FACS using cell type-specific reporter plasmid expression. Taken together, these datasets have begun to reveal the compartment- and cell-specific gene expression patterns that define the organization of the Ciona larval brain.
尾蟾型幼虫已成为研究神经发育的有趣模型系统。最近已经绘制出了文昌鱼的连接组图谱，揭示了已知所有脊索动物中最小的中枢神经系统（CNS），其中仅有 177 个神经元。这个最小的 CNS 与更大的脊椎动物 CNS 非常相似，它们共享许多保守的发育过程、解剖结构、神经元亚型，甚至特定的神经回路。因此，文昌鱼尾蟾幼虫为我们提供了一个独特的机会，可以在单细胞分辨率下了解脊索动物 CNS 的发育和连接。在这里，我们报告了使用单细胞 RNAseq 对通过荧光激活细胞分选（FACS）从 Ciona robusta（以前的文昌鱼 A 型）幼虫全脑中分离的单个细胞的转录组进行分析。我们还将这些图谱与通过 FACS 从特定的脑区细胞中分离的特定细胞类型的批量 RNAseq 数据进行了比较，这些细胞是通过细胞类型特异性报告质粒表达来分离的。综合来看，这些数据集已经开始揭示了定义文昌鱼幼虫大脑组织的区室和细胞特异性基因表达模式。
