Single-cell transcriptomics in the Drosophila visual system: Advances and perspectives on cell identity regulation, connectivity, and neuronal diversity evolution
Résumé
The Drosophila visual system supports complex behaviors and shares many of its anatomical and molecular features with the vertebrate brain, yet contains a more manageable number of neuronal types. In addition to the extensive Drosophila genetic toolbox, this relative simplicity has allowed decades of work to yield a detailed account of its neuronal type diversity, morphology, connectivity and specification mechanisms. In the past three years, numerous studies applied large scale single-cell transcriptomic approaches to the Drosophila visual system and provided access to gene expression of several dozens of neuronal types throughout development. The fly visual system is therefore a unique system in which developmental mechanisms for neuronal specification, neuronal connectivity and neuronal gene expression can be studied in great detail. Here, we highlight how these resources complement each other and allow exploring long-standing biological questions under a new light. We first present the efforts made to characterize neuronal diversity in the Drosophila visual system and suggest ways to further improve this description. We then discuss current advances allowed by the single-cell datasets, and envisage how these datasets can be further leveraged to address fundamental questions regarding neuronal identity regulation, neuronal circuit development and evolution of neuronal diversity.
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