Paolillo, Vitoria A Lundquist, Erik Identifying regulators of directed neuroblast migration in Caenorhabditis elegans <p>Guided neuronal migration is an essential process during nervous system development. The Q cell neuroblasts in <i>Caenorhabditis elegans </i>provide a simple and experimentally tractable model system for studies of directed neuronal migration. The Q neuroblasts are born in the same region of the animal and have similar differentiation patterns, yet undergo left-right asymmetric migration, with QR on the right migrating anteriorly and QL on the left migrating posteriorly. QL descendants encounter a posterior EGL-20/Wnt signal, which activates a canonical Wnt signaling pathway to induce expression of the Hox gene <i>mab-5</i> in QL and QL descendants, but not in QR and QR descendants. MAB-5 is both necessary and sufficient for posterior Q cell descendant migration, as QL descendants migrate anteriorly in <i>mab-5</i> loss-of-function (LOF) mutants, and QR descendants migrate posteriorly in <i>mab-5</i> gain-of-function (GOF) mutants. However, it is unknown what genes are regulated by MAB-5 in the Q cells to drive posterior migration. We isolated Q cells from wild-type and <i>mab-5 </i>LOF animals via fluorescence-activated cell sorting and completed RNA-seq to generate novel Q cell transcriptomes. We identified 222 genes that were differentially expressed in the <i>mab-5 </i>LOF Q cells versus wild-type Q cells. We predict that MAB-5 might affect Q cell migration by regulating other transcription factors, RNA processing factors, the cytoskeleton, and cell signaling factors. Thus, we have prioritized candidate transcription factors for functional studies, and identified 13 putative transcription factors that show decreased expression in the <i>mab-5 </i>LOF Q cells versus wild-type Q cells. We predict that these 13 transcription factors require MAB-5 for their expression, and thus may regulate posterior Q cell migration. Indeed, our preliminary functional studies have revealed that several of these putative transcription factors regulate Q cell migration. We anticipate that further functional studies of these candidate <i>mab-5 </i>targets will reveal new insights into directed Q neuroblast migration. </p> MAB-5;Caenorhabditis elegans;Neuronal migration;Q cells;FACS;RNA-seq;Neurogenetics;Gene Expression (incl. Microarray and other genome-wide approaches);Cell Biology;Bioinformatics 2020-04-20
    https://tagc2020.figshare.com/articles/poster/Identifying_regulators_of_directed_neuroblast_migration_in_Caenorhabditis_elegans/12150330
10.6084/m9.figshare.12150330.v1