Open AccessAnalysis of transcribed sequences from young and mature zebrafish thrombocytes
Author(s) -
Weam Fallatah,
Ronika De,
David Burks,
Rajeev K. Azad,
Pudur Jagadeeswaran
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0264776
Subject(s) - platelet , zebrafish , megakaryocyte , biology , gene , transcription factor , transcriptome , gene knockdown , microbiology and biotechnology , rna seq , gene expression , genetics , immunology , stem cell , progenitor cell
The zebrafish is an excellent model system to study thrombocyte function and development. Due to the difficulties in separating young and mature thrombocytes, comparative transcriptomics between these two cell types has not been performed. It is important to study these differences in order to understand the mechanism of thrombocyte maturation. Here, we performed single-cell RNA sequencing of the young and mature zebrafish thrombocytes and compared the two datasets for young and mature thrombocyte transcripts. We found a total of 9143 genes expressed cumulatively in both young and mature thrombocytes, and among these, 72% of zebrafish thrombocyte-expressed genes have human orthologs according to the Ensembl human genome annotation. We also found 397 uniquely expressed genes in young and 2153 uniquely expressed genes in mature thrombocytes. Of these 397 and 2153 genes, 272 and 1620 corresponded to human orthologous genes, respectively. Of all genes expressed in both young and mature thrombocytes, 4224 have been reported to be expressed in human megakaryocytes, and 1603 were found in platelets. Among these orthologs, 156 transcription factor transcripts in thrombocytes were found in megakaryocytes and 60 transcription factor transcripts were found in platelets including a few already known factors such as Nfe2 and Nfe212a (related to Nfe2) that are present in both megakaryocytes, and platelets. These results indicate that thrombocytes have more megakaryocyte features and since platelets are megakaryocyte fragments, platelets also appear to be thrombocyte equivalents. In conclusion, our study delineates the differential gene expression patterns of young and mature thrombocytes, highlighting the processes regulating thrombocyte maturation. Future knockdown studies of these young and mature thrombocyte-specific genes are feasible and will provide the basis for understanding megakaryocyte maturation.