Identification of Neuronal Lineages in the Drosophila Peripheral Nervous System with a "Digital" Multi-spectral Lineage Tracing System

Macy W Veling; Ye Li; Mike T Veling; Christopher Litts; Nigel Michki; Hao Liu; Bing Ye; Dawen Cai

doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2019.10.124

Identification of Neuronal Lineages in the Drosophila Peripheral Nervous System with a "Digital" Multi-spectral Lineage Tracing System

Cell Rep. 2019 Dec 3;29(10):3303-3312.e3. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.10.124.

Authors

Macy W Veling¹, Ye Li², Mike T Veling³, Christopher Litts⁴, Nigel Michki⁵, Hao Liu⁶, Bing Ye⁷, Dawen Cai⁸

Affiliations

¹ Life Sciences Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA; Cellular and Molecular Biology Graduate Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
² Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
³ Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA; Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
⁴ Life Sciences Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
⁵ Department of Biophysics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
⁶ Life Sciences Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA; Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
⁷ Life Sciences Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA; Cellular and Molecular Biology Graduate Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA; Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. Electronic address: bingye@umich.edu.
⁸ Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA; Department of Biophysics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. Electronic address: dwcai@umich.edu.

Abstract

Elucidating cell lineages provides crucial understanding of development. Recently developed sequencing-based techniques enhance the scale of lineage tracing but eliminate the spatial information offered by conventional approaches. Multi-spectral labeling techniques, such as Brainbow, have the potential to identify lineage-related cells in situ. Here, we report nuclear Bitbow (nBitbow), a "digital" version of Brainbow that greatly expands the color diversity for scoring cells, and a suite of statistical methods for quantifying the lineage relationship of any two cells. Applying these tools to the Drosophila peripheral nervous system (PNS), we determined lineage relationship between all neuronal pairs. This study demonstrates nBitbow as an efficient tool for in situ lineage mapping, and the complete lineage relationship among larval PNS neurons opens new possibilities for studying how neurons gain specific features and circuit connectivity.

Keywords: Bitbow; Brainbow; Drosophila; development; lineage tracing; multi-spectral labeling; peripheral nervous system; statistics.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

Animals
Brain / physiology
Cell Lineage / physiology*
Drosophila / physiology*
Larva / physiology
Neurons / physiology*
Peripheral Nervous System / physiology*

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding