Gene expression of dissected portions of the chicken embryo gastrula after homochronic and heterochronic grafts of somite progenitors

Heterochronic grafts (between different embryonic stages) have been described as having more posterior axis contributions than homochronic (stage-matched) ones. Here, we performed homochronic (HH4 to HH4) and heterochronic (HH8 to HH4) grafts from GFP expressing transgenic donor embryos to wild-type Bovans brown embryos and carried out single cell RNA-sequencing to understand the transcriptomic cell states occupied by homochronic and heterochronic grafts early after grafting. Overall design: HH8 to HH4 (HH8-HH4) and HH4 to HH4 (HH4-HH4) grafts were performed with GFP donor tissue and wild-type host tissue. Embryos were either dissected 0 hours (30 minutes) or 3 hours after grafting under a fluorescent dissecting scope and the region of the embryo approximately encompassing grafted cells was taken. Approximately 5-10 grafts were pooled per sample and dissociated. The samples included here are HH4-HH4 0 hours, HH4-HH4 3 hours, HH8-HH4 0 hours and HH8-HH4 3 hours. There is an additional replicate of HH4-HH4 0 hours that was collected separately.