Somatic cell lineage is required for differentiation and not maintenance of germline stem cells in Drosophila testes

Adult stem cells are believed to be maintained by a specialized microenvironment, the niche, which provides short-range signals that either instruct stem cells to self-renew or inhibit execution of preprogrammed differentiation pathways. In Drosophila testes, somatic cyst stem cells (CySCs) and the apical hub form the niche for neighboring germline stem cells (GSCs), with CySCs as the proposed source of instructive self-renewal signals [Leatherman JL, Dinardo S (2010) Nat Cell Biol 12(8): 806-811]. In contrast to this model, we show that early germ cells with GSC characteristics can be maintained over time after ablation of CySCs and their cyst cell progeny. Without CySCs and cyst cells, early germ cells away from the hub failed to initiate differentiation. Our results suggest that CySCs do not have a necessary instructive role in specifying GSC self-renewal and that the differentiated progeny of CySCs provide an environment necessary to trigger GSC differentiation. This work highlights the complex interaction between different stem cell populations in the same niche and how the state of one stem cell population can influence the fate of the other.