Abstract
It remains challenging to construct a complete cell lineage map of the origin of vascular endothelial cells in any vertebrate embryo. Here, we report the application of in toto light-sheet fluorescence imaging of embryos to trace the origin of vascular endothelial cells (ECs) at single-cell resolution in zebrafish. We first adapted a previously reported method to embryo mounting and light-sheet imaging, created an alignment, fusion, and extraction all-in-one software (AFEIO) for processing big data, and performed quantitative analysis of cell lineage relationships using commercially available Imaris software. Our data revealed that vascular ECs originated from broad regions of the gastrula along the dorsal–ventral and anterior–posterior axes, of which the dorsal–anterior cells contributed to cerebral ECs, the dorsal–lateral cells to anterior trunk ECs, and the ventral–lateral cells to posterior trunk and tail ECs. Therefore, this work, to our knowledge, charts the first comprehensive map of the gastrula origin of vascular ECs in zebrafish, and has potential applications for studying the origin of any embryonic organs in zebrafish and other model organisms.
Highlights
Determining cell lineage relationships is one of the most fundamental questions in the fields of developmental biology and genetics
We have developed an effective workflow for tracing cell lineages in zebrafish using a Zeiss Z.1
Because the cross-correlation uses all pixels for registration, we applied it to present the global features of the sample together with the structural similarity index for registration, and obtained a satisfactory result
Summary
Determining cell lineage relationships is one of the most fundamental questions in the fields of developmental biology and genetics. As in other vertebrates, hematopoietic and endothelial cells (ECs) arise in close association and are thought to be derived from the ventral mesoderm[4,5]. Single-cell resolution fate maps of the late blastula and gastrula with 2,3-dimethyl-2,3-dinitrobutanecaged fluorescein dextran provided the very first in vivo evidence that individual cells give rise to both hematopoietic cells and ECs, and that the majority of ECs are derived from the ventral–lateral (VL) region of the shield embryo in zebrafish[6]. A comprehensive lineage map of the origin of vascular ECs in vertebrates has not yet been reported
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