Single-Cell Transcriptomic Analysis in the Regenerating Cnidarian Nematostella vectensis

Flora Plessier (1, 2, 3, 4) , Sandrine Schmutz (5) , Sophie Novault (5) , Heather Marlow (4, 1)

1 University of Chicago
2 ED515 - Ecole Doctorale Complexité du Vivant
3 ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon
4 Département de Biologie du Développement et Cellules souches - Department of Developmental and Stem Cell Biology
5 UTechS CB - Cytometrie et Biomarqueurs – Cytometry and Biomarkers

Cnidarians have historically served as excellent laboratory models for regenerative development given their capacity to regrow large portions of the adult organism. This capacity is notably absent or poorly developed in the powerful genetic laboratory models Drosophila , C. elegans , and mouse. Increasingly, development of genetic and genomic resources and the application of next-generation sequencing-based techniques in cnidarian systems has further expanded the potential of cnidarian regenerative models. Here, we present a workflow for the characterization of the regenerative response in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis utilizing fluorescence-activated cell sorting and a plate-based single-cell RNA-sequencing pipeline. This approach can characterize the transcriptional response during regeneration in distinct populations of cells, thus providing a quantitative view of a whole organism process at cellular resolution.

Keywords: Single-cell RNA-seq; Cnidaria; Nematostella vectensis; Regeneration; Flow cytometry

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]

Flora Plessier, Sandrine Schmutz, Sophie Novault, Heather Marlow. Single-Cell Transcriptomic Analysis in the Regenerating Cnidarian Nematostella vectensis. Whole-Body Regeneration, 2450, Springer US, pp.565-581, 2022, Methods in Molecular Biology, 978-1-0716-2172-1 (ebook). ⟨10.1007/978-1-0716-2172-1_30⟩. ⟨pasteur-03697615⟩