Developmental time-course of adult cell-type-specific retina genes of amacrine cells
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ABSTRACT: Brain circuits are assembled from a large variety of morphologically and functionally diverse cell types. It is not known how the intermingled cell types of individual brain regions differ in their expressed genomes. Here we describe an atlas of cell type transcriptomes of the adult retina. We found that each adult cell type expresses a specific set of genes, including a unique set of transcription factors, forming a “barcode” for cell identity. Cell type transcriptomes carry enough information to categorize cells into corresponding morphological classes and types. Surprisingly, several barcode genes are eye disease-associated genes that we demonstrate to be specifically expressed not only in photoreceptors but also in particular retinal circuit elements such as inhibitory neurons as well as in retinal microglia. Our data suggest that distinct cell types of individual brain regions are characterized by marked differences in their expressed genomes. To obtain insight into the developmental time course of adult cell type-specific gene expression, we followed gene expression in one amacrine cell group, Arc cells, for 20 postnatal days (P) starting at P1. Qualitative analysis of the expression time-course of cell type-specific genes revealed four patterns: increasing, decreasing or constant expression from P1 to P20, or a biphasic time-course (constant and increasing) with a switch at P9-P10. At this latter time point, bipolar cells begin to form synapses with amacrine and ganglion cells and the retina becomes light responsive. Pairwise correlations across the transcriptomes measured on each day exposed two major clusters, from P1 to P9 and from P10 to P20, which also suggested a transcriptional switch during the transition from P9 to P10. Thus, most adult cell type-specific genes are also expressed during development but at levels different to those in the adult.
ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus
PROVIDER: GSE33088 | GEO | 2011/11/30
SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA155527
REPOSITORIES: GEO
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