Single-cell resolution of MET- and EMT-like programs in osteoblasts during zebrafish fin regeneration

W Joyce Tang; Claire J Watson; Theresa Olmstead; Christopher H Allan; Ronald Y Kwon

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.103784

Single-cell resolution of MET- and EMT-like programs in osteoblasts during zebrafish fin regeneration

iScience. 2022 Jan 19;25(2):103784. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.103784. eCollection 2022 Feb 18.

Authors

W Joyce Tang^{1

2}, Claire J Watson^{1

2}, Theresa Olmstead^{1

2}, Christopher H Allan^{1

2}, Ronald Y Kwon^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA 98105, USA.
² Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98109, USA.

Abstract

Zebrafish regenerate fin rays following amputation through epimorphic regeneration, a process that has been proposed to involve the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). We performed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to elucidate osteoblastic transcriptional programs during zebrafish caudal fin regeneration. We show that osteoprogenitors are enriched with components associated with EMT and its reverse, mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET), and provide evidence that the EMT markers cdh11 and twist2 are co-expressed in dedifferentiating cells at the amputation stump at 1 dpa, and in differentiating osteoblastic cells in the regenerate, the latter of which are enriched in EMT signatures. We also show that esrp1, a regulator of alternative splicing in epithelial cells that is associated with MET, is expressed in a subset of osteoprogenitors during outgrowth. This study provides a single cell resource for the study of osteoblastic cells during zebrafish fin regeneration, and supports the contribution of MET- and EMT-associated components to this process.

Keywords: Biological sciences; Developmental biology; Omics; Transcriptomics.

Abstract

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