RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Unbiased classification of mosquito blood cells by single-cell genomics and high-content imaging
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 234492
DO 10.1101/234492
A1 Maiara S. Severo
A1 Jonathan J.M. Landry
A1 Randall L. Lindquist
A1 Christian Goosmann
A1 Volker Brinkmann
A1 Paul Collier
A1 Anja E. Hauser
A1 Vladimir Benes
A1 Johan Henriksson
A1 Sarah A. Teichmann
A1 Elena A. Levashina
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/12/22/234492.abstract
AB Mosquito blood cells are ancestral immune cells that help control infection by vector-borne pathogens. Despite their importance, little is known about mosquito blood cell biology beyond the ambiguous morphological and functional criteria used for their classification. Here we combined the power of single-cell RNA-sequencing, imaging flow cytometry and single-molecule RNA hybridization to analyze blood cells of the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae. By demonstrating that blood cells express nearly half of the mosquito transcriptome, our dataset represents an unprecedented view into their transcriptional machinery. Analyses of differentially expressed genes identified transcriptional signatures of two distinct cell types that challenge the current morphology-based classification of these cells. We further demonstrated an active transfer of a cellular marker between blood cells that confounds their identity. We propose that cell-to-cell exchange is broadly relevant for cell type classification and may account for the remarkable cellular diversity observed in nature.