[
International Worm Meeting,
2021]
Cell migration drives morphogenesis, the developmental process in which cells become spatially organized to form tissues. An understanding of the molecular mechanisms and regulatory triggers behind cell migration has clinical relevance because it not only explains how embryos develop but offers insights into immune response and metastatic cancers. However, the mechanisms that regulate the transition between migratory and non-migratory states are not well understood, especially in vivo. In C. elegans, studies of cell migration have revealed some critical mechanisms, but classical genetic approaches have been limited in part because they miss redundant or pleiotropic genes. To look past these limitations, we conducted a comparative transcriptomic analysis using the scRNA-seq data published by Packer et al (2019), which mapped RNA transcriptomes of embryos onto C. elegans developmental lineages. We first identified cells of unambiguous lineage that undergo different types of embryonic cell migration. We then used the differential expression analysis workflow in Monocle 3 (Trapnell, 2019) to compare the transcriptomes of these migrating cells to their non-migrating cellular progenitors and progeny. In our analysis we identify 86 candidate genes from six migratory events, 46 of which come up as differentially expressed (DE) in more than one lineage. 30 of the candidates have known lethal phenotypes and 42 are associated with cell migration defects in C. elegans or in other systems. In comparing migrating lineages, we show that while no single set of mRNAs is associated with all migration events and each individual event has unique characteristics, there are some similarities within migration types. Clustering analysis reveals that cells undergoing intercalation and enclosure, which also share both lineage and fate, have DE gene patterns that are more similar to each other than to other migration types. Cells that ingress form a more diffuse cluster with other ingressing cells, with lineage playing an important role, a result supported by work from other labs (Harrell & Goldstein, 2011). Migrations of cells along the embryo surface also cluster, suggesting that despite differences in lineage and fate these migrating cells share some common mechanisms. Our analysis reveals that changes in gene expression associated with migrating cells are relatively complex but can be explored using DE analysis.