Differential gene expression during D. melanogaster head development

Although compound eye development and retinal differentiation are among the most intensively studied processes in D. melanogaster, a comprehensive understanding of the underlying gene expression dynamics is still missing to date. To identify the genes expressed during D. melanogaster eye-antennal disc development and their expression dynamics, we performed RNA-seq on this tissue at three larval stages covering the process of retinal differentiation that is marked by the progression of the morphogenetic furrow. The late L2 stage (72h after egg laying, AEL) represents the initiation of differentiation, at mid L3 stage (96h AEL) the morphogenetic furrow is in the middle of the retinal field and the late L3 stage (120h AEL) represents the end of morphogenetic furrow progression (Fig 1A). Multidimensional scaling clustering clearly indicated that the largest difference in gene expression (dimension 1) was between L2 eye-antennal discs (72h AEL) and L3 eye-antennal discs (96h and 120h AEL) (S1 Fig).

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Fig 1. Analysis pipeline and expression dynamics at stage transitions.

(A) The mRNA of eye-antennal imaginal discs was sequenced at three developmental stages: late L2, mid L3 and late L3. Upwards arrows illustrate the applied analysis pipeline. The total number of expressed genes for each stage transition is shown below the imaginal discs (B: late L2 to mid L3; C: mid L3 to late L3). The numbers next to the green arrows represent upregulated genes in each transition and the numbers next to the red arrow represent downregulated genes. (B) GO term enriched in the upregulated (green, left) and downregulated (red, right) genes in the transition from late L2 to mid L3 stage. (C) GO terms enriched in the upregulated (green, left) and downregulated (red, right) genes in the transition from mid L3 to late L3 stage.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1007180.g001

After filtering out not expressed and very lowly expressed genes, we observed that 9,194 genes were expressed at least in one of the three sequenced stages. As anticipated by the multidimensional scaling plot (S1 Fig), the number of genes that changed their expression between 72h AEL and 96h AEL was much larger than between 96h AEL and 120h AEL, (Fig 1A). In only 24 hours, during the transition from L2 to L3, 60% of the expressed genes changed their expression significantly. In the transition from mid L3 to late L3, in contrast, only 22% of the genes underwent a change in their expression. The observation that many more genes were significantly differentially expressed during the transition from late L2 stages to mid L3 stages may in part also be caused by the fact that only female discs were analyzed between 96h and 120h AEL, while we compared mixed males and females at 72h AEL with only females at 96h AEL during the first transition. Since about one third of all genes in D. melanogaster show signs of sex-specific expression [57], the differentially expressed genes in the first transition may also include some male or female biased genes. However, in a GO term analysis, we only found two terms associated with the search term “sex” (see Materials and Methods), namely “sex differentiation” (GO:0007548; padj = 5.35e-5; 47 genes) and “dosage compensation” (GO:0007549; padj = 2.61e-3; 15 genes) among those genes that were higher expressed at 96h AEL. None of the 165 terms was enriched in those genes higher at 72h AEL and among differentially expressed genes in the 96h vs. 120h comparison.

It has been shown that early eye-antennal disc stages are mainly characterized by patterning processes that subdivide the initially uniform disc into the individual organ anlagen [6,15,18,25,58–61]. Within organ-specific domains, further patterning processes define for instance the dorsal ventral axis in retinal field [62–64] or the proximal-distal axis of the antennae [65]. Additionally, the discs grow extensively throughout L1 and L2 stages mainly by cell proliferation [15,66]. Accordingly, the genes active at the late L2 stage were mostly involved in metabolic processes and generation of energy (Fig 1B). At the end of L2 stages, the patterning processes are mostly concluded and differentiation starts within each compartment. For instance, in the retinal field the progression of the differentiation wave is accompanied by a reduction in cell proliferation [8,10]. Therefore, mostly genes related to cell differentiation, nervous system development, pattern specification and compound eye development were significantly up-regulated at the mid L3 stage (Fig 1B). During the transition from the mid L3 stage to the late L3 stage again genes related to metabolism and energy production were down-regulated (Fig 1C). This may be explained by the fact that at 96h AEL the disc has not yet reached its final size, and cells anterior to the morphogenetic furrow still proliferate [10]. Also, directly behind the morphogenetic furrow one last synchronous cell division takes place to give rise to the last cells of the photoreceptor clusters (R1, R6 and R7) [10,60]. In the light of ongoing differentiation, genes active at the late L3 stage belonged to GO categories related to differentiation processes (Fig 1C). At this stage, terms related to processes taking place late during eye-antennal disc development [10] such as R7 cell differentiation or pigment metabolic process (Fig 1C) were also obtained.

In summary, the pairwise comparison of expression levels of genes expressed at the three studied stages of eye-antennal disc development recapitulate the key transition from pattering and proliferation processes to differentiation.

Co-expression clustering reveals gene expression dynamics during eye-antennal disc development

In order to better characterize the different expression dynamics of the expressed genes, we performed a co-expression clustering analysis based on Poisson Mixture models [67]. Manual comparison of the different outputs showed that the 13 clusters predicted by one of the models (Djump, [68]) were non-redundant and sufficiently described all the expression profiles present in the data. A total of 8,836 genes could be confidently placed in one of these clusters (maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) > 99%). We ordered the predicted 13 clusters according to their expression profile (Fig 2): four clusters contained clearly early expressed genes, two of them contained genes expressed only at 72h AEL (cluster 1 and 2) and two contained genes predominantly expressed early, but also with low expression at 96h and/or 120h AEL (clusters 3 and 4); one cluster showed down-regulation at 96h AEL, but a peak of expression again at 120h AEL (cluster 5); the genes in the largest clusters showed almost constant expression throughout the three stages (clusters 6 and 7); one cluster showed constant expression at 72h AEL and 96h AEL and down-regulation at 120h AEL (cluster 8); one cluster showed a peak of expression at 96h AEL (cluster 9) and four clusters contained genes with predominantly late expression, one with high and constant expression at 96h AEL and 120h AEL (cluster 10), two with up-regulation in both transitions (cluster 11 and cluster 12) and one with genes expressed only at 120h AEL (cluster 13).

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Fig 2. Co-expression clusters.

All 13 profiles of co-expressed genes predicted by HTSCluster (see Materials and Methods). The number of genes assigned to a particular cluster are indicated below the cluster name. Colored dots represent relative expression levels (lambda value) of the genes of that cluster (y-axis on the right) at each stage. Background grey lines represent the normalized mean count of all genes belonging to a cluster (y-axis on the left). Below each cluster plot, the first four non-redundant GO terms enriched in the genes of that cluster are listed (see S1 Table) and the significantly enriched transcription factors (NES > 3, see S2 Table) are shown (the NES value is given in brackets).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1007180.g002

A GO enrichment analysis for the genes in the individual clusters showed that the genome-wide co-expression profiling and subsequent ordering of the clusters recapitulated the consecutive biological processes that take place during eye-antennal disc development with a great resolution (Fig 2, S1 Table). For instance, we found genes related to energy production mainly in clusters 2 and 3, while genes more specific for terms related to mitosis and cell cycle were found in clusters 4, 8 and 9. For example, cluster 8 grouped genes that were similarly high expressed at 72h and 96h AEL, and their expression decreases at 120h AEL. The enrichment of GO terms related to DNA replication and cell cycle control (Fig 2; S1 Table), corresponds with the fact that active proliferation takes place at these stages [60]. Thus, other genes that were grouped in this cluster, but for which no previous knowledge is available, are likely also related to these biological functions. Genes up-regulated in the later stages were separated in more specific clusters, and most of the enriched GO terms were related to differentiation and neuron and eye development. For instance, cluster 10 contained the more general term “imaginal disc development”, while cluster 12 showed enrichment for “compound eye morphogenesis”, and cluster 13 was the only with enriched terms related to pupation processes and pigmentation.

In order to get an overview of the presence of key eye developmental genes in the individual clusters, we mapped the clusters onto the FlyODE network (Fig 3) that comprises manually curated interactions of genes involved in retina development [50]. Only ten of the 146 genes of this network were not present in any of the 13 clusters, either because they did not pass the expression level or the cluster assignment thresholds (grey nodes in Fig 3). Apart from the cell death regulator reaper (rpr) (cluster 3), all other genes of this network are present in clusters 7 to 13 (Fig 3), that represent genes with constant expression throughout the three stages (clusters 7 to 9) or with increasing expression at later stages (clusters 10 to 13) (Fig 2). This observation is in accordance with the nature of the FlyODE network that covers mainly stages of retinal differentiation from the third instar to the adult [50]. The most prominent retinal determination genes [7,10] eyeless (ey), sine oculis (so), dachshund (dac) and optix/six3 are present in clusters 7 to 9, while eyes absent (eya), twin of eyeless (toy) and eye gone (eyg) were found in clusters 10 and 11. Among the genes expressed during late L3 stages in clusters 12 and 13 we found central genes involved in photoreceptor and neuronal differentiation [10] such as atonal (ato), glass (gl) and prospero (pros) (Figs 2 and 3). Members of well-known developmental signaling pathways such as the Wnt, BMP and Hh pathways, EGFR, Notch and cell cycle related genes (e.g. CycE) were present in cluster 10 (Fig 3) that grouped genes with similarly high expression at 96h AEL and 120h AEL (Fig 2). Among genes which steadily increased in expression throughout the three studied stages (cluster 12), we found for instance Delta (Dl), which is one of the Notch receptor ligands [69] and has been shown to fulfill different roles during eye development [66,70,71]. Also, anterior open (aop) (also known as yan), a member of the JNK signaling pathway [72], which is described to repress photoreceptor differentiation [73] and also to determine R3 photoreceptor identity [74] was present in this cluster.

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Fig 3. Assignment of key retinal genes to identified co-expression clusters.

Directed gene interaction network (FlyOde,[50]) of the genes known to be involved in retinal development in D. melanogaster. Only genetic and protein-DNA interactions are included. The horizontal axis represents developmental time, with early L3 at the most left, and the vertical axis displays network hierarchy (please see [50] for details). Each node represents a gene, and these are color-coded according to the assigned co-expression cluster (see also Fig 2). In grey are genes that have not been allocated to any cluster, either because they did not pass the expression level threshold or the clustering confidence threshold (see Materials and Methods for details).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1007180.g003

Although we sequenced the entire eye-antennal discs, we found many GO terms related to eye development with high enrichment scores, while very few GO terms specific for antenna and maxillary palps were observed (e.g. in cluster 12 “eye development” appears with p = 4.38e-24, “antennal development” with p = 4.37e-08 and no GO terms related to maxillary palps were found) (S1 Table). This finding may be a result of much more extensive research on eye specific developmental processes in comparison to the other organs that develop from the same imaginal disc. However, many GO terms related to leg formation and proximodistal pattern formation were highly enriched in the genes in cluster 9 (“proximaldistal pattern formation” with p = 4.48e-05), cluster 10 (“leg disc development” with p = 7.85e-20) and cluster 12 (“leg disc development” with p = 4.32e-12) (S1 Table). Since antennae and maxillary palps are serially homologue to thoracic appendages, pathways involved in leg, antenna and maxillary palp development are likely to share key regulators [17,65,75–80], suggesting that genes found in these clusters may also play a role in antenna or maxillary palp development.

The assignment of all expressed genes to their corresponding cluster is available along with the GEO submission number GSE94915 and on this website http://www.evolution.uni-goettingen.de/posnienlab/clusterSearch/search.html.

In summary, we showed that clusters with early expressed genes mainly represent metabolic and energy related processes, while clusters with late expressed genes represent more organ specific differentiation and morphogenetic processes. Therefore, we provide a dataset that contains the complete gene expression dynamics underlying the fundamental change from predominantly patterning and proliferation processes to the onset of differentiation from late L2 stages to late L3 larval instars [7,28].

Transcription factors regulating D. melanogaster eye-antennal disc development

The co-expression of genes observed in the 13 clusters may be a result of co-regulation by the same transcription factors or combinations thereof. In order to test this hypothesis and to reveal potential central upstream regulators, we used the i-cisTarget method [81] to search for enrichment of transcription factor binding sites in the regulatory regions of the genes within each of the 13 clusters (Fig 2, S2 Table). As basis for this enrichment analysis various experimental ChIP-chip and ChIP-seq datasets were used, namely those published by the modENCODE Consortium [82], the Berkeley Drosophila Transcription Network Project [83] and by the Furlong Lab [84,85].

One of the most noticeable results of the statistical ranking analysis was that genes in 9 of the 13 clusters showed significant enrichment for Nejire binding sites (Fig 2). Nejire (also known as CREB-binding protein (CBP)) is a zinc-finger DNA binding protein that functions as a co-activator that acts as bridge for other transcription factors to bind specific enhancer elements [86–88], which can explain why we find it to regulate such many target genes. Nejire/CBP has been shown to be involved in many processes during eye development and patterning in D. melanogaster [89,90] and mutations in this gene cause the Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome in humans [91] that among others is characterized by extensive problems during retinal development [92].

Similarly, Pannier was found enriched to regulate the genes of many clusters (clusters 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11) (Fig 2). This GATA transcription factor is involved in the establishment of the dorsal-ventral axis of the retinal field of the discs during early L1 and L2 stages [93,94], while later during L2 and L3 stages it is known to have a role in defining the head cuticle domain by repressing eye determination genes [64,94]. In both cases, Pannier is found in a very upstream position of the respective gene regulatory networks that define these cell fates [64,95].

Besides these highly abundant transcription factors, the clusters with genes predominantly expressed at later stages were also enriched for transcription factors already known to play a role in eye-antennal disc development. For instance, a significant number of Sloppy-paired 1 (Slp1) target genes are up-regulated at L3 stage (cluster 12, Fig 2) and this transcription factor is known to play a critical role in establishing dorsal-ventral patterning of the eye field in the eye-antennal disc [96]. A function of Daughterless (Da) (identified in cluster 13, Fig 2) is also described: it is expressed in the morphogenetic furrow, it interacts with Atonal and is necessary for proper photoreceptor differentiation [97]. Finally, Snail (enriched in cluster 1 and 13) and Twist (enriched in cluster 12) (Fig 2) were previously identified as possible repressors of the retinal determination gene dac [98] and our results indicate that they regulate also other genes during eye-antennal disc development.

Cluster 5 contained genes that show a peak in expression at 72h AEL and 120h AEL stages, which precede major stage transitions from L2 to L3 and from L3 to pupa stage, respectively. These transitions are characterized by ecdysone hormone pulses before larval molting and pupation [99]. The only potential transcription factor binding site that was significantly enriched was that of the Ecdysone Receptor (EcR), that has been shown to be expressed in the eye-antennal disc in the region of the progressing morphogenetic furrow [100].

Intriguingly, we did not find an enrichment for known transcription factors such as So or Ey. The most obvious explanation is that there is no ChIP-seq data available (e.g. for Ey) or that the available data for these factors (e.g. for So [48]) is not included as transcription factor binding information in the current i-cisTarget database [81,101].

Potential new regulators of eye-antennal disc development

The identification of well-known transcription factors suggests that the applied clustering approach indeed allows identifying key regulators of various processes taking place throughout eye-antennal disc development. Interestingly, we identified a few generally well-known upstream factors for which a potential role during eye-antennal disc development has not yet been described. For instance, in clusters of very early expressed genes, we found an enrichment of motifs for the transcription factor Caudal (Cad) (cluster 1 and 2) and the Hox protein Fushi tarazu (Ftz) (cluster 1) (Fig 2). Caudal is a downstream core promoter activator [102] and very recently it has been found that it cooperates with Nejire to promote the expression of the homeobox gene fushi tarazu (ftz) [103]. A Caudal-like transcription factor binding motif has been identified within Sine oculis (So) bound DNA fragments as identified by ChIP-seq [48], suggesting that So and Cad may co-regulate potential target genes in the eye-antennal disc.

The MADS-box transcription factor Myocyte enhancer factor 2 (DMef2) was predicted to regulate genes found in clusters 2, 4 and 12 (Fig 2). Using two independent Dmef2-Gal4 lines to drive GFP expression, we confirmed expression of Dmef2 in lose cells attached to the developing eye-antennal discs (S2 Fig). Eventually, we found an enrichment of potential target genes of the C2H2 zinc-finger transcription factor Hunchback (Hb) in clusters 12 and 13, which are active mainly during mid and late L3 stages. Since GO terms enriched in these two clusters suggested an involvement in retinal development or neurogenesis (Fig 2, S1 Table), we examined a potential function of Hb in the eye-antennal disc in more detail.

hb is expressed in retinal subperineurial glia cells

Using in-situ hybridization we found hb expression in two cell nuclei at the base of the optic stalk in the posterior region of late L3 eye-antennal discs (S3A Fig). With a Hb antibody we also detected the Hb protein in these two basally located nuclei (S3B and S3C Fig). DNA staining with DAPI showed that the Hb-positive nuclei are bigger than those of surrounding cells, suggesting that they are polyploid. Additionally, we tested two putative Gal4 driver lines obtained from the Vienna Tile library [104] (VT038544; S3D Fig and VT038545; S3E Fig). Both lines drove reporter gene expression in the two polyploid nuclei as described above. Note that both lines also drove the typical hb expression in the developing embryonic nervous system, but not the early anterior expression [105,106]. The regulatory region covered by the two Gal4 driver lines is located at the non-coding 3’ end of the hb locus accessible to DNA-binding proteins at embryonic stages 9 and 10 [83] (S4 Fig), a time when early-born neuroblasts express hb [55]. The lack of the early anterior expression may be explained by the fact that the DNA region covered by the driver lines does not seem to be bound by Bicoid during early embryonic stages [83] (S4 Fig). Based on these findings, we are confident that the regions covered by the two Gal4 driver lines (VT038544 and VT038545) recapitulate native hb expression.

The basal location of the hb-positive cells suggests that they may be retinal glia cells. Co-expression of hb with the pan-glial marker Repo (Fig 4A–4C) further supported this suggestion. Previous data has shown that two polyploid retinal subperineurial glia cells (also referred to as carpet cells) cover the posterior region of the eye-antennal disc [34,36]. In order to test, whether hb may be expressed in carpet cells, we first investigated the expression of the subperineurial glia marker Moody [107] and we found a clear co-localization with Hb (Fig 4D).

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Fig 4. hb is expressed in migratory subperineurial glia cells.

(A-C) hb expression (VT038544-Gal4 driving histone-bound RFP (UAS-H2B::RFP) (A-C), red in A”-C”) co-localizes (white arrows) with the pan-glial marker Repo (detected with rabbit α-Repo antibody (A’-C’), green in A”-C”) in two large cells. These cells migrate from the optic stalk during L2 stage (A”) into the posterior end of the eye-antennal disc at mid L3 stage (B”) and are located in the posterior region of the retinal field, at each side of the optic stalk, at late L3 stage (C”). (VT038544-Gal4 driver line obtained from the Vienna Tile collection, see S4 Fig for details) (D) Hb (detected with rabbit α-Hb antibody, red in D”) is present in the same cells (white arrows) that express the subperineurial glia cell marker moody (D’) (moody-Gal4 driving UAS-GFP, green in D”). In all pictures, anterior is to the right. Eye disc (ed), optic stalk (os). Scale bar = 20 μm.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1007180.g004

Carpet cells migrate through the optic stalk into the eye-antennal disc during larval development [34,36]. Therefore, we followed the expression of the hb driver lines throughout late L2 and L3 larval stages (Fig 4A–4C). Already at the L2 stage, we could easily recognize the hb-positive cell nuclei by their large size (Fig 4A and 4A”; see also size quantification in Fig 5D). We could corroborate that these cells indeed migrated through the optic stalk during late L2 and early L3 stages (Fig 4A and 4B), and then entered the disc and remained basally in the posterior region of the disc, flanking the optic stalk (Fig 4C and 4C”). As previously observed for carpet cells [34], we never found hb-positive cell nuclei in the midline of the retinal field.

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Fig 5. The number of polyploid glia cell nuclei is reduced after loss of Hb function.

(A-C) Staining with rabbit α-Repo antibody (red) and Phalloidin (green) of late L3 eye-antennal discs in wild type (A), repo driven hb RNAi (B) and Hb temperature sensitive mutant (C). This figure represents the phenotypes that were analyzed in (D), where the number of polyploid nuclei (white arrows) have been quantified. In all pictures, anterior is to the right. Scale bar = 20 μm. (D) Box plot of glia cell nuclei size. When two carpet cells were present, these are significantly larger than other surrounding glia cells. When only one carpet cell was present in the retinal field, its nucleus was significantly larger than regular carpet cells. Significance calculated by t-test (“Two CCs” vs. “One CC”, homogeneous distribution of variances) and t-Welch-test (“Other glia” vs. “Two CCs”, not homogeneous distribution of variances); “***”: p < 0.0005. (E) Quantification of the number of polyploid nuclei observed in wild type (WT), repo-Gal4 and moody-Gal4 driven UAS-hb RNAi (hb^dsRNA) and Hb temperature sensitive mutant (hb^TS). (F) Quantification of the number of polyploid nuclei observed in late L3 eye-antennal discs of flies that were raised at 18°C until the indicated time points (24h AEL, 48h AEL, 72h AEL and 96h AEL), when they were transferred to the restrictive temperature of 28°C. In D and E, the black bar indicates percentage of discs with two polyploid glia cell nuclei, grey indicates discs with one polyploid glia cell nucleus and white indicates discs without polyploid glia cell nuclei. Pearson’s Chi-squared test was performed to determine if the distribution of the different number of cells (0, 1 or 2) was equal between wild type and RNAi. *: p-val < 0.05, ***: p-val < 0.0005.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1007180.g005

Taken together, these data show that hb is expressed in two polyploid retinal subperineurial glia cells (carpet cells) that enter the basal surface of the eye-antennal disc through the optic stalk during larval development.

Hb function is necessary for the presence of polyploid carpet cells in the eye-antennal disc

The expression of hb in carpet cells suggested an involvement in their development. To test this hypothesis, we examined loss of Hb function phenotypes based on RNA interference (RNAi) driven specifically in subperineurial glia cells (moody-Gal4 driving UAS-hb^dsRNA). Of four tested UAS-hb^dsRNA lines we used the most efficient line (see Materials and Methods) for the RNAi knock-down experiments. Additionally, we investigated eye-antennal discs of a temperature sensitive mutant (hb^TS) [108]. Since Hb is necessary during embryogenesis [53,54], the analyzed flies were kept at 18°C during egg collection and throughout embryonic development, and they were only transferred to the restrictive temperature of 28°C at the L1 stage. We quantified the size differences between carpet cell nuclei and neighboring glia cells by measuring the nucleus area. The mean area of a Repo-positive glia cell was 30.42 μm², while the carpet cell nuclei had a mean area of 86.10 μm² (Fig 5A and 5D). Based on these clear results, the presence or absence of carpet cell nuclei could be confidently identified by α-Repo staining because of their significantly larger size (see Fig 5A and 5D).

The most common phenotype observed in late L3 eye-antennal discs of RNAi and mutant flies was the absence of one or both carpet cell nuclei (Fig 5A–5C). In wild type animals, we could unambiguously identify two carpet cell nuclei in 72% of the eye-antennal discs. In 21% of the analyzed discs, we found only one carpet cell nucleus (Fig 5E). In contrast, in 35% to 40% of the studied Hb loss of function discs only one carpet cell nucleus was observed (Fig 5B and 5E). This single polyploid Repo-positive nucleus was significantly larger than carpet cell nuclei in discs that contained two carpet cell nuclei (Fig 5D; 129.80 μm² compared to 86.10 μm² if two carpet cells were present). Additionally, the single carpet cell nuclei were mostly located in the midline of the retinal field (Fig 5B). No carpet cell nuclei could be observed in 24% and 38% of the eye-antennal discs originating from moody>>hb^dsRNA and hb^TS flies, respectively (Fig 5C and 5E). Note that we obtained comparable results when we expressed the hb dsRNA in all glia cells (repo>>hb^dsRNA) or only in subperineurial glia cells (moody>>hb^dsRNA).

To identify larval stages at which Hb function is crucial for carpet cell development, we transferred hb^TS flies to the restrictive temperature of 28°C at 24h AEL (early L1 stage), at 48h AEL (late L1), at 72h AEL (late L2) or 96h AEL (mid L3 stage) and assessed the presence of polyploid Repo-positive carpet cell nuclei in late L3 eye-antennal discs, respectively. In all cases, we found a significant reduction of the number of carpet cell nuclei when compared to control discs (Fig 5F). Although no clear significant differences in the number of carpet cells was detected between the consecutive experiments (S5 Fig), our results show that Hb function is necessary for the presence of polyploid carpet cell nuclei throughout larval development.

Loss of Hb function affects carpet cell migration

The observed loss of polyploid carpet cell nuclei could be a result of either the loss of the entire carpet cells, incomplete migration into the eye-antennal disc or loss of the polyploidy. To distinguish between these options, we tested whether also the carpet cell membranes were affected upon loss of hb expression, in addition to the polyploid nuclei. To this aim, we expressed hb^dsRNA specifically in subperineurial glia cells with a moody-Gal4 driver line together with a strong membrane marker (20xUAS-mCD8::GFP) to label the extensive carpet cell membranes (moody>>20xmCD8::GFP; moody>>hb^dsRNA, Fig 6).

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Fig 6. Carpet cell membranes after loss of carpet cells.

(A-C) All glia cells are stained with rabbit α-Repo antibody (red in A”-C”). In control discs, two carpet cells can be identified by their large size (white arrows). After moody driven knock-down of hb expression (B and C) some discs present only one carpet cell nucleus (B, white arrow) and others no carpet cell nucleus (C) (refer to Fig 5 for percentages). (A’-C’) Membranes of carpet cells in late L3 eye-antennal discs are labelled with moody-Gal4 driven UAS-mCD8::GFP expression (green in A”-C”). The presence of these membranes was analyzed in the optic stalk (orange arrowheads) and in the retinal field (determined by the presence of these membranes in the posterior margins of the disc and their extension to the MF (blue arrowheads)). In all pictures, anterior is to the right. Eye disc (ed), optic stalk (os). Scale bar = 20 μm. (D) Quantification of the presence of carpet cell membrane as described in A’-C’. Pearson’s Chi-squared test was performed to determine significance between each pair of condition. *: p-val < 0.05, ***: p-val < 0.0005.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1007180.g006

In the eye-antennal discs where two carpet cells could be identified, moody expressing membranes were always present in the optic stalk and in most cases (95%) they spanned the entire posterior region of the eye-antennal disc up to the morphogenetic furrow (Fig 6A and 6D). In discs with only one clear carpet cell nucleus, we observed a decrease both in the cases where mCD8::GFP was present in the optic stalk (82%) and even more in the retinal field (73%) (Fig 6B and 6D). Of the discs with no clear polyploid carpet cell nuclei (Fig 6C and 6D), also fewer (89%) showed moody expressing membranes in the stalk, although also the difference was not significant compared to controls. However, a very significant decrease in the percentage of discs with moody expressing membranes in the retinal field was observed in this case (22%).

Loss of Hb function results in blood-brain barrier defects

Subperineurial glia cells cover the entire surface of the brain from larval stages onwards. They are an integral part of the protective blood-brain barrier by establishing intercellular septate junctions [109]. The blood-brain barrier prevents the substances that circulate in the hemolymph to enter the brain and helps maintaining the proper homeostatic conditions of the nervous system [110]. Since it has been shown that the carpet cells migrate through the optic stalk towards the brain during pupal stages [40], we tested, whether the loss of hb expression in developing carpet cells had an effect on the integrity of the blood-brain barrier.

To this aim, we injected fluorescently labeled dextran into the abdomen of moody>>hb^dsRNA adult flies and scored the presence of this dye in the retina of the flies. Animals with a properly formed blood-brain barrier showed a fluorescent signal in their body, but not in the retina (Fig 7A). However, in animals that had an incomplete blood-brain barrier, the dextran penetrated into the retina and fluorescence was observed in the compound eyes (Fig 7A’). Since it is known that blood-brain barrier permeability can increase after exposure to stress conditions [111,112], we only scored animals that survived 24h after the injection of dextran. In most cases, the two eyes of an individual presented different fluorescent intensities, and even no fluorescence in one eye but strong signal in the other. Therefore, we scored each eye separately. moody>>hb^dsRNA flies had a significantly higher rate of fluorescent retinas (p = 8.08e-7, χ² test), indicating that their eyes were not properly isolated from the hemolymph circulating in the body cavity (Fig 7B).

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Fig 7. Blood-brain barrier function is impaired after loss of hb expression in carpet cells.

(A) After injection of fluorescently labelled dextran into the abdomen of adult flies, animals with correctly formed blood-brain barrier show no fluorescence in the compound eye. (A’) In flies with incomplete blood-brain barrier, fluorescent dye can be observed in the compound eye as well as in the body. (B) Quantification of eyes with (green) or without (red) dye penetration. hb knock-down flies have a significant increase in the penetrance of dye into the eye, indicating a defective blood-eye barrier. Pearson’s Chi-squared test was performed to determine significance between the wild type results and the RNAi. ***: p-val < 0.0005.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1007180.g007

In summary, our loss of function experiments further confirmed a central role of Hb in carpet cell development. Besides impaired retinal glia cell migration and axon guidance, we showed that upon loss of Hb function also the blood-brain barrier integrity is disrupted.

Expression of putative Hb target genes in eye-antennal discs

Since we have identified Hb because of an increase in expression of its target genes during 96h and 120h AEL stages and hb itself is only expressed in carpet cells, we also investigated, whether some of the targets were expressed in these cells. Using available ChIP-chip data for Hb from the Berkeley Drosophila Transcription Network Project (BDTNP) [83], we generated a high confidence list of 847 putative Hb target genes (see Materials and Methods for details), of which 585 were expressed in eye-antennal discs at least in one of the studied stages. More precisely, we found that 267 of these genes were differentially expressed in the transition from 72h to 96h AEL and only 52 were differentially expressed between 96h and 120h AEL (Fig 8, S4 Table). In both cases, most of these genes were up-regulated, suggesting that Hb mainly activates target gene expression in the eye-antennal disc. Focusing only on those target genes that resulted in the identification of Hb in our clustering approach (see above), we found that 77 of the 585 expressed putative Hb targets were present in clusters 12 and 13. We searched the GO terms for biological functions of these 77 genes and found that 17 code for transcription factors and up to 25 code for proteins integral to the cell membrane. A number of GO terms were related to neuronal development and eye development and to note is the presence of genes known to be related to glia cell migration and endoreduplication (S5 Table).

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Fig 8. Differentially expressed putative Hb target genes.

Green and red shaded circles are up- and down-regulated genes, respectively. Larger circle size indicates higher log2-fold change. (A) 267 genes from the high confidence list of Hb targets are differentially expressed in the eye-antennal discs during the transition from late L2 (72h AEL) to mid L3 (96h AEL) stages. 33 genes are down-regulated and 234 are up-regulated (see S4 Table). (B) 52 genes from the high confidence list of Hb targets are differentially expressed in the eye-antennal discs during the transition from mid L3 (96h AEL) to late L3 (120h AEL) stages. 10 genes are down-regulated and 42 are up-regulated (see S4 Table).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1007180.g008

Based on their annotated GO terms, predicted or known cellular location and the availability of driver lines and antibodies, we selected 13 of these target genes and tested if they were expressed in carpet cells at 120h AEL. For 8 out of the 13 selected targets we found no clear expression related to carpet cells (archipelago (ago), Delta (Dl), knirps (kni), rhomboid (rho), roundabout 3 (robo3), Sox21b, Src oncogene at 64B (Src64B) and thickveins (tkv)). This could be because they were false positives, but they could also be expressed at earlier stages than analyzed here or the used driver constructs did not include the regulatory regions to drive expression in carpet cells. Tkv for instance could still be an interesting candidate because it has been implicated in retinal glia cell development [113]. brinker (brk), Cadherin-N (CadN), cut (ct), Fasciclin 2 (Fas2) and sprouty (sty) showed expression in carpet cells (Fig 9). brinker (brk) was very broadly expressed in the eye-antennal disc (S6C and S6D Fig). Although we could only observe expression in one of the two cells in every eye-antennal disc we analyzed, CadN is clearly expressed in carpet cells (Fig 9A). Recent data demonstrated that CadN, a Ca⁺ dependent cell adhesion molecule, is necessary for the proper collective migration of glia cells [114], a key feature of carpet cells. As it has previously been published, Cut is expressed in subperineurial glia cells (Fig 9B) [115]. The Cut protein is present in carpet cells already at L2 stage and remains until late L3 stage (Fig 9B). It has been shown that Cut is necessary for proper wrapping glia differentiation (note that the wrapping glia expression is found in another focal plane in Fig 9B) and to correctly form the large membrane processes that these cells form [115]. Interestingly, carpet cells have a similar morphology, with very large membrane surface and extensive processes that reach to the edge of the retinal field. In contrast, retinal perineurial glia do not have this morphology and do not express Cut. Also, Fas2 (Fig 9C) and sty (Fig 9D) were clearly expressed in carpet cells as well as in several other cells in the eye-antennal disc. Sty and Fas2 are negative regulators of the EGFR signaling pathway that is involved in retinal glia cell development and photoreceptor differentiation [116–121].

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Fig 9. Expression of Hb target genes in the eye-antennal discs.

Four of the tested target genes show expression in carpet cells. Eye disc (ed), optic stalk (os). Scale bar = 20 μm. (A) CadN-Gal4 drives UAS-GFP expression (green in A”) in one of the two carpet cells (white arrow), as well as other cells in the disc, possibly glia cells. (A’ and A”). Glia cells are marked with an antibody against the pan-glial marker Repo (rabbit α-Repo, red) and Repo-positive carpet cell nuclei are recognized by their large size (see also Fig 5D). (B) mouse α-Cut (red in B”) showed a clear signal in the two carpet cells (white arrows). (B’ and B”). Carpet cell nuclei were recognized by the expression of the subperineurial glia marker moody (moody-Gal4 driving UAS-GFP expression, green). DAPI shows the eye-antennal disc surface. (C) Fas2-Gal4 drives UAS-H2B::RFP (red in C”) expression in the two carpet cells (white arrows). (C’ and C”) Carpet cell nuclei are recognized by their large size with DAPI and their location on the posterior edge of the retinal field between the outgoing axons visualized with Phalloidin staining (green). (D) Sty-Gal4 drives UAS-H2B::RFP (red in D”) expression in the two carpet cells (white arrows), as well as in other cells in the disc. Due to folding of the imaged disc, the right (D-I) and left (D-II) carpet cells where not found in the same focal plane. (D’ and D”) Carpet cell nuclei are recognized by their large size with DAPI and their location on the posterior edge of the retinal field between the outgoing axons visualized with Phalloidin staining (green).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1007180.g009

Please note that we used antibodies to detect target genes if they were available. Given the nature of the CadN and Fas2 proteins [122,123], we detected broad membrane associated expression for both proteins (S6 Fig). Therefore, we decided to study the expression of those two candidates using available Gal4 lines (see above and Fig 9A and 9C). For both lines, we found at least one high confidence Hb motif (S6 Table).

In summary, we showed that 5 of the 13 computationally predicted Hb target genes that we tested were expressed in carpet cells, suggesting that our bioinformatic pipeline allows the identification of new potential regulators of carpet cell development.

Genome wide expression dynamics allows the identification of known and new transcription factors involved in eye-antennal disc development

Although compound eye development is one of the most extensively studied processes in D. melanogaster, a comprehensive understanding of genome wide gene expression dynamics is still missing. A previous genome wide expression study based on Microarray data has shown that between 5,600 and 6,100 genes are active in the retinal part of the eye-antennal disc at the late L3 instar stage [49]. Given that we studied the entire eye-antennal discs at three time points, our observation that 9,194 of all annotated D. melanogaster genes are expressed in at least one stage is likely to provide a meaningful estimate of the number of active genes throughout eye-antennal disc development. The pairwise comparison of the studied stages (Fig 1), as well as the more defined clustering approach (Fig 2), revealed an extensive remodeling of the transcriptomic landscape during eye-antennal disc development.

It has previously been shown that co-expression of genes is likely to be a result of regulation by similar or even the same transcription factors [124–128]. This basic assumption has been successfully used to identify central transcriptional regulators in developmental gene regulatory networks [44,85,129–133]. Here, we identified several transcriptional regulators, such as Pnr, Nejire, Slp1, Da, Snail, Twist and EcR (Fig 2) that have previously been shown to regulate various aspects of eye-antennal disc development, but we also found new transcriptional regulators. For instance, the MADS-box transcription factor Myocyte enhancer factor 2 (DMef2) was predicted to regulate a number of genes in various clusters. The detection of Dmef2 expression in lose cells attached to the developing eye-antennal discs (S2 Fig) confirmed that our result is not an artefact, but rather specific. Since, DMef2 is crucial for the development of muscle and heart tissue [134] these cells could be precursors of future head muscles. However, some recent findings could also hint towards an important role of this transcription factor in eye development since DMef2 has been implicated in circadian behavior [135] and larval eye and adult ocelli function [136]. These findings certainly encourage additional research on the possible role of DMef2 in photoreceptor cell development.

Taken together, the combination of dynamic gene expression clustering and upstream factor enrichment provides an excellent basis for the identification of potential new regulators involved in a given biological process.

Integration of genomic resources: Opportunities and limitations

We identified a number of putative direct transcriptional regulators, although the ChIP-seq experiments that identified the direct interaction of a transcription factor with its target genes were not specifically performed in eye-antennal disc tissue at the stages we studied here. Indeed, most data available in current databases is based on experiments in embryonic or adult stages [82,83,85,137,138]. Interestingly, the enrichment of Caudal in clusters 1 and 2 (S2 Table) is based on data from a ChIP-seq experiment performed in adult flies [82], but does not represent an experiment performed in embryos [83]. This could indicate that Caudal has very different downstream targets during embryogenesis compared to its target genes at later stages. Although this observation may also indicate that the parameters and thresholds used in the different ChIP-seq experiments are very different, a large degree of tissue and stage specific target genes is expected. In the light of this specificity, we may miss eye-antennal disc specific target genes in our survey, but we are confident that one can identify a representative set of target genes to justify further tissue and stage specific ChIP-seq experiments if necessary.

We failed to identify enriched motifs for classical retinal determination genes such as So, Ey or Glass (Gl) in any of the 13 clusters, due to the fact that respective ChIP-seq data is either not available or not included in the i-cisTarget database. Therefore, our analysis is biased towards those transcription factors for which ChIP-seq data is publicly available. We performed a preliminary power analysis to evaluate the potential to pick up an enrichment of So binding sites. We identified those clusters that contained 112 previously identified putative So/Eya target genes [47] and we found 76 of them distributed throughout all clusters (S3 Table). The most representative clusters were cluster 2 with 17 (of 656 genes in the cluster) and cluster 10 with 15 (of 935 genes in the cluster) So/Eya target genes. Given that the significantly enriched transcription factors with relatively low NES scores of 3.7 (Mef2 in cluster 2) and 3.5 (dTcf in cluster 10) (Fig 2) are predicted to regulate 57 and 559 target genes, respectively, this analysis very likely would not provide enough power to pick up a statistically significant enrichment. However, we detected an enrichment for Nejire although its putative target genes are present in 9 of 13 clusters. One explanation could be that the Nejire protein is detected ubiquitously in the entire eye disc [90] where it acts as a co-regulator [86–88] and thus influences the expression of many target genes. In contrast, classical retinal determination genes are dynamically expressed in more restricted domains, what is recapitulated by a highly complex regulation of these genes [139,140] and many different functions throughout eye-antennal disc development. Previous studies aiming at the identification of target genes resulted in limited lists of putative target genes for So (112 high confidence targets [47]) and Ey (20 direct targets in the retinal part of the eye-antennal disc [46]) suggesting that retinal determination genes regulate a restricted number of genes in a highly context dependent manner.

A new role of Hb in retinal glia development

The combination of our genome wide expression analysis with functional experiments revealed a novel role of the C2H2 zinc-finger transcription factor Hunchback (Hb) in carpet cell development. Carpet cells have been shown to be a sub-population of the subperineurial glia cells due to shared key cellular features, such as the formation of extensive septate junctions [34]. However, a well-established subperineurial glia cell driver (NP2276 [141]) does drive reporter gene expression in brain subperineurial glia, but we could not detect expression in carpet cells. In contrast, we only detected hb expression in carpet cells and not in any subperineurial glia cells in the larval brain (results confirmed both using immunostaining and two driver lines (VT038544 and VT038545)). Additionally, if we compare our list of putative Hb target genes with the 50 genes enriched in adult blood-brain barrier surface glia [51], we only find Fas2 to be present in both datasets. All these data suggest that carpet cells are indeed a retina specific subperineurial glia cell type that is molecularly very distinct from brain subperineurial glia cells.

The carpet cells function as a scaffold for undifferentiated retinal perineurial glia cells, which migrate into the disc to find the nascent axons of differentiating photoreceptors [34] and to guide them through the optic stalk [35]. In accordance with these roles, our Hb target gene analysis revealed many candidate target genes with GO terms related to axon guidance (S5 Table). Upon loss of Hb function, the most obvious phenotype was the lack of polyploid cell nuclei and carpet cell membranes in the eye-antennal discs. In contrast to our results, previous studies have shown that carpet cell ablation or a reduction of their size causes over migration of perineurial glia cells anterior to the morphogenetic furrow [34,113]. The corresponding experiments are based on the induction of cell death in moody expressing cells [34] and thus affect not only the carpet cells, but also for instance all other subperineurial glia of the brain. Since hb is specifically expressed carpet cells, the phenotype obtained here may be more specific. It remains to be studied, however, how carpet cells and subperineurial glia cells of the brain may interact to regulate perineurial glia cell migration in the eye-antennal discs.

Carpet cells possess a high level of plasticity since the loss of one carpet cell from the retinal field resulted in one larger carpet cell (i.e. larger polyploid nucleus) located in the midline of the eye field. In these cases, also no perineurial glia cell over migration could be observed and the membrane of this single cell seemed to sufficiently cover the full retinal field indicating that a single carpet cell could compensate the loss of the other one.

Carpet cells are an integral part of the blood-brain barrier

The loss of hb expression affected the integrity of the blood-eye barrier, a subset of the blood-brain barrier (Fig 7). This phenotype was not as striking as previously published for moody mutant flies [39], where all surface glia cells were affected, suggesting that the carpet cells may indeed only contribute to the retinal part of the blood-brain barrier (i.e. the blood-eye barrier). Additionally, in our analysis of the moody positive cell membranes present in the optic stalk in hb^RNAi flies we found still carpet cell membranes in the optic stalk in up to 80% of the knock-down discs (Fig 6D). This is a similar proportion as we find in our blood-brain barrier assay (Fig 7).

The largest portion of the blood-brain barrier is already established by the end of embryogenesis [142,143], while the eye-antennal disc and developing photoreceptors seem to be accessible for the hemolymph during larval and very early pupal stages. Indeed, the final closure of the blood-brain barrier in the region where the optic stalk contacts the brain (i.e. the blood-eye barrier) is only established late during pupal development [109,144]. The rather late formation of the blood-eye barrier may be related to the dual role of carpet cells, which first migrate into the eye-antennal disc and only during pupal stages migrate back into the optic stalk towards the brain lobes. By mid-pupa stages they are located at the base of the brain lamina [40], where they remain throughout adult life and form septate junctions that isolate the brain and retina from the hemolymph [109]. The use of the newly analyzed driver lines, which drive expression specifically in the carpet cells represent an excellent starting point to study the migration of these cells throughout late larval and pupae stages in more detail.

Implications on the role of Hb and the origin of carpet cells

The lack of ployploid large carpet cells during larval stages and the loss of blood-brain barrier integrity could either indicate a central role of Hb in specifying carpet cell identity entirely or a more specific role in defining aspects of carpet cell identity such as polyploidy and/or its migratory behavior. Based on our data, we propose the following cellular functions:

First, the lack of polyploid nuclei could hint towards a role of Hb in regulating the extensive endoreplication process necessary to generate such huge cell nuclei. Indeed, in our target gene analysis we found archipelago (ago) as one potential target. Ago has been shown to induce degradation of CyclinE (CycE) [145], a crucial prerequisite for efficient endoreplication cycles [146]. Second, Hb could be involved in establishing the migratory behavior of carpet cells. In the list of putative Hb target genes, we found many genes with GO terms related to cell migration and, some even specifically with the “glia cell migration” term. Additionally, many of the identified Hb target genes are involved in the epidermal growth factor (EGF) pathway that has various roles in development and cancer [147–149] including cell division, differentiation, cell survival and migration [150,151]. The list of Hb target genes up-regulated at 96h and 120h AEL in eye-antennal disc development includes both positive (rhomboid, Star and CBP) and negative regulators (Fasciclin2 and sprouty) of this pathway. Fas2 and sprouty are specifically expressed in carpet cells (Fig 9C and 9D), suggesting that Hb may actively influence the migratory behavior of carpet cells by activating genes involved in EGFR signaling regulation. Another putative target gene of Hb is Ets98b (Fig 8B), the ortholog of which has recently been shown to induce ectopic cell migration upon misexpression during early embryonic development in the common house spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum [152]. Finally, Nejire has been shown to be involved in glia cell migration in the peripheral nervous system in Drosophila [153], and we found it as putative regulator of genes in cluster 13. It remains to be established, whether Nejire and Hb may collaborate during carpet cell development.

Although carpet cells fulfill fundamental functions, it is still unclear where these cells originate from. Based on observations by Choi and Benzer (1994) using the enhancer trap line M1-126, these cells originate in the optic stalk where they are present at late L2 stage [36]. It has also been proposed that carpet cells may originate from a pool of neuroblasts in the neuroectoderm during embryogenesis [154] or in the optic lobes [155]. A clonal analysis using the FLP-out system suggests that various retinal glia cell types, including the carpet cells, originate from at least one mother cell at L1 larval stage [35]. Since only one polyploid cell nucleus seems to originate from one clone [35] and we show that in some loss of Hb imaginal discs only one polyploid cell nucleus is present, we propose that the two carpet cells may originate independently probably from two mother cells defined during L1 stages. Our observation that loss of Hb function resulted in loss of polyploid carpet cell nuclei when hb^TS mutant flies were transferred to the restrictive temperature during the L1 larval stage, further supports an involvement of Hb during this stage (Fig 5 and S5 Fig).

The exact role of Hb, however, is still unclear and will require further in-depth analyses. The newly analyzed driver lines in combination with the extensive list of potential Hb target genes, of which many are likely to be expressed in this specific glia cell type, represents a valuable resource to address the questions concerning the origin of these cells in more detail.

Conclusions

The identification of Hb has only been possible because we studied the dynamic expression profiles of all genes expressed during eye-antennal disc development. Since the RNA levels of hb in the entire eye-antennal disc are negligible, we could identify Hb as central factor only through the expression profiles of its putative target genes, which are steadily up-regulated throughout development. This up-regulation is very likely due to the large cell bodies of the carpet cells, which need to produce high amounts of cytosolic or membrane bound proteins. At earlier stages, carpet cells are not yet in the eye-antennal discs, and hb expression could only been have identified by studies focused on the optic stalk. Moreover, we could show that refining the putative Hb target genes by incorporating the expression data results in a list that contains genes with GO terms highly specific for the putative function of Hb in carpet cells. Following the stepwise identification of putative target genes, we could confirm a high number of those experimentally.

All these findings demonstrate that the combination of high throughput transcript sequencing with a ChIP-seq data based transcription factor enrichment analysis can reveal previously unknown factors and their target genes, and therefore increase the number of connections within the underlying developmental GRNs. Other studies have searched for regulating transcription factors that were in the same co-expression clusters as its targets genes [44]. However, upstream orchestrators do not necessarily have the same expression levels as their targets. Therefore, the combination of ChIP-seq methods with RNA-seq co-expression analyses has proven to be a powerful tool to identify new developmental regulators that can complement other studies based on reverse genetics.

RNA extraction and sequencing

D. melanogaster (OregonR) flies were raised at 25°C and 12h:12h dark:light cycle for at least two generations and their eggs were collected in 1h windows. Freshly hatched L1 larvae were transferred into fresh vials in density-controlled conditions (30 freshly hatched L1 larvae per vial). At the required time point, eye-antennal discs of either only female larvae (96h and 120h AEL) or male and female larvae (72h AEL) were dissected and stored in RNALater (Qiagen, Venlo, Netherlands). Please note that a mix of males and females was dissected for the 72h AEL samples because it is not possible to morphologically distinguish the sex at this stage. 40–50 discs were dissected for the 120h samples, 80–90 discs for the 96h samples and 120–130 discs for the 72h samples. Three biological replicates were generated for each sample type.

Total RNA was isolated using the Trizol (Invitrogen, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA) method according to the manufacturer’s recommendations and the samples were DNAseI (Sigma, St. Louis, Missouri, USA) treated in order to remove DNA contamination. RNA quality was determined using the Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer (Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA, USA) microfluidic electrophoresis. Only samples with comparable RNA integrity numbers were selected for sequencing.

Library preparation for RNA-seq was performed using the TruSeq RNA Sample Preparation Kit (Illumina, catalog ID RS-122-2002) starting from 500 ng of total RNA. Accurate quantitation of cDNA libraries was performed using the QuantiFluordsDNA System (Promega, Madison, Wisconsin, USA). The size range of final cDNA libraries was determined applying the DNA 1000 chip on the Bioanalyzer 2100 from Agilent (280 bp). cDNA libraries were amplified and sequenced (50 bp single-end reads) using cBot and HiSeq 2000 (Illumina). Sequence images were transformed to bcl files using the software BaseCaller (Illumina). The bcl files were demultiplexed to fastq files with CASAVA (version 1.8.2).

Bioinformatics analysis

Experimental procedure