2023-08-01 13:05:25
Representation of a fruit fly head and single cell RNA sequencing clusters of the developing visual system. – MONIKA JASNAUSKAITE
MADRID, 1 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) –
New York University researchers have discovered new types of cells in the visual system of flies, with a tool that finds and labels neurons during development.
The study, published in the journal ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ (PNAS), combines single-cell sequencing data with a novel algorithm to identify pairs of genes that target previously unknown cells in the brain of fruit flies.
Fruit flies (also known as ‘Drosophila’) have long been used as a model organism to study fundamental questions about brain development and function.
Instead of the 86 billion neurons in humans, fruit flies have about 100,000 neurons. which makes brain research more manageable, albeit complex.
The use of genetic tools to distinguish different cell types in fruit flies has revolutionized the study of neural circuitry in the brain, allowing scientists to accurately understand the development, function, and behavior of the circuits.
“A distinctive feature of the central nervous system is the diversity of cell types responsible for many different functions,” he says. it’s a statement Claude Desplan, NYU Silver Professor of Biology and Neural Sciences and lead author of the study.
Previous research from Desplan’s lab used single-cell sequencing to determine that There are approximately 200 cell types in the visual system of the developing fly.
Single cell sequencing reveals gene expression, so when cells have the same patterns of gene expression, it is likely that they perform the same task and are therefore of the same cell type.
The scientists could identify about half of the 200 cell types of the developing fly’s visual system based on their gene expression and previous studies, but they lacked a way to more easily study and label the other 100 cell types.
Existing tools that allowed the neural circuitry of adult fruit flies to be precisely manipulated often failed to label the same neurons during development, making them unsuitable for studying developing brain cells.
“In addition, the previous approach to identify cell types it involves the laborious testing of numerous combinations of candidate genes.
We knew we needed a much more efficient method for labeling specific cell types, and we were able to take advantage of the increasing amount of single-cell sequencing data available,” says Yu-Chieh David Chen, a postdoctoral research associate in the NYU Department of Biology and first author of the study. .
Chen and his colleagues created a tool that harnesses the wealth of single-cell sequencing data from the developing fly’s visual system to identify genes — and gene combinations — They are expressed exclusively in certain cell types.
To find a cell type, researchers often look for genetic markers or genes specific to a cell type.
But often a gene is expressed in several cell types, making it difficult to differentiate between them.
The tool developed by the NYU researchers uses a slightly different approach: find two matching genes in only one cell type.
By inputting single-cell RNA sequencing data into an algorithm they created, the researchers systematically identified pairs of genes that are uniquely expressed in most cell types of the fruit fly visual system at multiple stages of their development.
One of these gene pairs led to the discovery of MeSps, a completely new cell type.
“This pioneering and effective approach provides the field of neuroscience with exceptional tools to investigate developmental issues with great precision,” Desplan said.
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