Transcriptomic analysis of Drosophilalarval crystal cells. Drosophila melanogaster

Crystal cells are one of the 3 Drosophila blood cell lineages and represent less than 5% of the total hemocytes in wild type larvae. There development is notably controlled by mlf (myeloid leukemia factor), which regulate their number by stabilising the lineage-specific transcription factor Lozenge. To gain insight into the biology of this blood cell lineage and its regulation by mlf, we established the gene expression profile of the circulating crystal cells in wildtype and mlf mutant third instar larvae. This study provides a rich source of information to further characterise crystal cell function and regulation. In addition our data show that mlf is a major regulator of crystal cell gene expression programm and that mlf mutation leads to the accumulation of misdifferentiated crystal cells. Overall design: RNA expression profiles of sorted lz-GAL4,UAS-GFP+ circulating blood cells from wild type and mlf-/- third instar Drosophila larvae were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate, using Illumina HiSeq2500 sequencing platform.