A single-cell transcriptomic atlas of the adult Drosophila ventral nerve cord

Allen, A.M.; Neville, M.C.; Birtles, S.; Croset, V.; Treiber, C.D.; Waddell, S.; Goodwin, S.F.

doi:10.7554/elife.54074

A single-cell transcriptomic atlas of the adult Drosophila ventral nerve cord

Allen, A.M.; Neville, M.C.; Birtles, S.; Croset, V.; Treiber, C.D.; Waddell, S.; Goodwin, S.F.

Authors

A.M. Allen

M.C. Neville

S. Birtles

Dr Vincent Croset vincent.croset@durham.ac.uk
Assistant Professor

C.D. Treiber

S. Waddell

S.F. Goodwin

Abstract

The Drosophila ventral nerve cord (VNC) receives and processes descending signals from the brain to produce a variety of coordinated locomotor outputs. It also integrates sensory information from the periphery and sends ascending signals to the brain. We used single-cell transcriptomics to generate an unbiased classification of cellular diversity in the VNC of five-day old adult flies. We produced an atlas of 26,000 high-quality cells, representing more than 100 transcriptionally distinct cell types. The predominant gene signatures defining neuronal cell types reflect shared developmental histories based on the neuroblast from which cells were derived, as well as their birth order. The relative position of cells along the anterior-posterior axis could also be assigned using adult Hox gene expression. This single-cell transcriptional atlas of the adult fly VNC will be a valuable resource for future studies of neurodevelopment and behavior.

Citation

Allen, A., Neville, M., Birtles, S., Croset, V., Treiber, C., Waddell, S., & Goodwin, S. (2020). A single-cell transcriptomic atlas of the adult Drosophila ventral nerve cord. eLife, 9, Article e54074. https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.54074

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Apr 3, 2020
Online Publication Date	Apr 21, 2020
Publication Date	2020
Deposit Date	Jul 27, 2020
Publicly Available Date	Aug 21, 2020
Journal	eLife
Publisher	eLife Sciences Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	9
Article Number	e54074
DOI	https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.54074
Publisher URL	https://elifesciences.org/articles/54074

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Copyright Statement
Copyright Allen et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.