1. Single-cell transcriptional analysis reveals developmental stage-dependent changes in retinal progenitors in the murine early optic vesicle
- Author
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Katsunori Fujiki, Katsuhiko Shirahige, Hirotaka Takezoe, Ryuichi Yamada, Akira Oguri, Naoki Takahashi, and Yoshiakira Kanai
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Embryo, Nonmammalian ,genetic structures ,Biophysics ,Biology ,Optic cup (anatomical) ,Eye ,Biochemistry ,Retina ,Mice ,03 medical and health sciences ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,0302 clinical medicine ,medicine ,Animals ,Optic stalk ,Progenitor cell ,Molecular Biology ,Mice, Inbred ICR ,Stem Cells ,Vesicle ,Retinal ,Cell Biology ,Optic vesicle ,eye diseases ,Cell biology ,Neuroepithelial cell ,030104 developmental biology ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,chemistry ,030220 oncology & carcinogenesis ,Female ,sense organs ,Single-Cell Analysis ,Transcriptome ,Signal Transduction - Abstract
The optic vesicle in the developing embryonic eye contains a multitude of neuroepithelial progenitors that subsequently differentiate into functionally distinct domains of the optic cup, such as the neural retina, pigment epithelium, and optic stalk. To investigate cell-type diversity across early optic vesicles before regionalization of the optic cup, we performed single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) using 7989 cells from the presumptive eye area in mouse embryos at the 12–26-somite stages at five developmental time points. We demonstrated the presence of seven optic vesicle populations. Moreover, the four populations of retinal progenitor cells could be classified according to their stage-dependent time point, and these cells exhibited altered expression of several structural and metabolic key genes, such as Col9a1 and Ckb, just before regionalization of the optic cup. From these data, we provide the first report on stage-dependent transcriptional profiles during initial retinal specification at single-cell resolution and highlight the unexpected developmental heterogeneity of the murine optic vesicle structure.
- Published
- 2021