Drosophila PGC transcriptome. Drosophila melanogaster

To understand transcriptomic dynamics of PGC (primordial germ cells; pole cell) of fruit fly, we used fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) to isolate PGC from the embryos carrying the transgene, EGFP-vasa, which expresses GFP specifically and continuously in the germline throughout the life cycle. The PGCs collected at 11 time points during the embryogenesis were subjected to microarray analyses. Overall design: RNA from FACS-sorted PGCs collected at 11 different time points were hybridized to a microrray after Cy3/Cy5 labeling. Four indepent experiments (biological replicates) were conducted for each time point. A pooled total RNA purified from whole embryos at early to late stage was used as a common reference in all hybridizations.