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Developmental organization of sensory and sympathetic ganglia | Nature

Source: NatureView Original
scienceApril 1, 2026

Subjects

- Cell lineage

- Development

- Developmental neurogenesis

Abstract

The neural crest generates a broad spectrum of cell types that migrate across the body plan to populate multiple tissues1. However, the relationship between lineages of neural crest derivatives remains unclear, and the extent to which neural crest cells delaminated from the neural tube have specified fates remains debated. Here, leveraging CRISPR barcoding in mice and mosaic variant barcode analysis in humans, we demonstrate robust bilateral progenitor clonal spread of neural crest progenitors along the rostrocaudal axis but limited clonal overlap between sensory and sympathetic lineages. Computational modelling of mosaic variants suggests that most neural crest cells show strong fate restriction before delamination. Real-time imaging of quail embryos further shows a fibroblast-growth-factor-dependent rostrocaudal dispersion of neural crest cells across multiple axial levels. These findings support a model in which neural crest fate bias predominantly emerges within the neural tube, with only a minor subset of delaminated progenitors retaining multipotency to generate both sensory and sympathetic derivatives.

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Fig. 1: Analysis of clonal relationships between DRG and SG by MVBA in mice and humans.

Fig. 2: Spatial distribution of clonal MVs in human DRG and SG.

Fig. 3: DRG and SG are clonally independent tissues in humans.

Fig. 4: NC cell fate specification occurs before left–right determination.

Fig. 5: Rostrocaudal migration across multiple levels distributes clones specific to DRG or SG.

Data availability

Raw whole-genome sequencing, massive parallel amplicon sequencing (MPAS), single-nucleus MPAS (snMPAS), mouse single-cell RNA sequencing and human single-nucleus sequencing data are available from the SRA (accession number PRJNA799597); human_g1k_v37 reference genome from http://ftp.1000genomes.ebi.ac.uk/vol1/ftp/technical/reference/; gnomAD reference panel from https://gnomad.broadinstitute.org/; and mm10 (GRCm38) reference genome from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/genome/GCF_000001635.20/.

Code availability

Codes for the data processing and annotation are provided at GitHub (https://github.com/shishenyxx/Human_DRG_SG).

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