Fig. 1: Single-nucleus RNA-seq analysis identifies early germline and somatic populations in the Drosophila testis.
From: Dissecting the enhancer gene regulatory network in early Drosophila spermatogenesis
a Schematic of an adult Drosophila testis depicting germline (red) and somatic (blue) lineages, with an inset highlighting the niche and early progenitor cells. b UMAP embedding comparing our data (gray) with the Fly Cell Atlas (colored clusters) reveals high concordance across datasets. c Transcriptomic UMAP, illustrating two distinct trajectories representing germline and somatic differentiation; cells are colored by latent time. d Heatmap showing dynamic expression of germline DEGs across latent time, scaled per gene; marker genes, cell numbers, and transcriptional dynamics are indicated. e Equivalent latent time analysis for the somatic lineage. f Latent time-based clustering recapitulates domains of known differentiation markers in transcriptomic space. g Matrixplot of established and candidate markers across clusters. h–k Validation of marker gene expression using vasaEGFP (magenta) testes to visualize the germline, hub cells are delineated by E-cad or Fas3 (yellow) and somatic cells by Tj (yellow). hovo mRNA (green) localizes to Vasa-positive germline cells (white dashed lines) adjacent to hub cells (Ecad, yellow). i Org-1 protein (green) is restricted to hub cells. jDWnt6 mRNA (green) is detected in CySCs (blue dashed lines) and hub cells (white dashed line). ktj mRNA (green) colocalizes with Tj in early somatic cells. Scale bars, 15 µm. See also Supplementary Fig. 1, Supplementary Tables 1 and 2, Supplementary Data 1–4.
