Transcriptomic analysis of Drosophilalarval crystal cells

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.晶细胞（Crystal cells）是果蝇（Drosophila）三大血细胞谱系之一，在野生型幼虫的总血细胞中占比不足5%。其发育过程显著受髓系白血病因子（mlf, myeloid leukemia factor）调控，该因子通过稳定谱系特异性转录因子Lozenge来调节晶细胞的数量。为深入解析该血细胞谱系的生物学特性及其受mlf的调控机制，我们获取了野生型及mlf突变型三龄幼虫循环晶细胞的基因表达谱。本研究为进一步阐明晶细胞的功能与调控机制提供了丰富的研究资源。此外，我们的数据表明mlf是晶细胞基因表达程序的核心调控因子，mlf突变会导致分化异常的晶细胞积累。总体实验设计：采用Illumina HiSeq2500测序平台，对野生型及mlf-/- 三龄果蝇幼虫中经分选的lz-GAL4,UAS-GFP+循环血细胞进行深度测序，每组设置3次生物学重复。