Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, MO, USA.
Nature. 2019 Jul;571(7765):349-354. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1385-y. Epub 2019 Jul 10.
Ascidian embryos highlight the importance of cell lineages in animal development. As simple proto-vertebrates, they also provide insights into the evolutionary origins of cell types such as cranial placodes and neural crest cells. Here we have determined single-cell transcriptomes for more than 90,000 cells that span the entirety of development-from the onset of gastrulation to swimming tadpoles-in Ciona intestinalis. Owing to the small numbers of cells in ascidian embryos, this represents an average of over 12-fold coverage for every cell at every stage of development. We used single-cell transcriptome trajectories to construct virtual cell-lineage maps and provisional gene networks for 41 neural subtypes that comprise the larval nervous system. We summarize several applications of these datasets, including annotating the synaptome of swimming tadpoles and tracing the evolutionary origin of cell types such as the vertebrate telencephalon.
海鞘胚胎突出了细胞谱系在动物发育中的重要性。作为简单的原脊椎动物，它们还为颅嵴和神经嵴细胞等细胞类型的进化起源提供了线索。在这里，我们确定了超过 90,000 个细胞的单细胞转录组，这些细胞跨越了整个发育过程——从原肠胚形成到游动的蝌蚪——在海鞘肠道中。由于海鞘胚胎中的细胞数量较少，这代表了每个细胞在每个发育阶段的平均超过 12 倍的覆盖。我们使用单细胞转录组轨迹来构建虚拟细胞谱系图谱和 41 个组成幼虫神经系统的神经亚型的暂定基因网络。我们总结了这些数据集的几个应用，包括注释游动蝌蚪的突触组和追踪细胞类型的进化起源，如脊椎动物的端脑。
