founder cell for visceral somatic muscles

[gouttegd]

Found when working on scRNAseq data from Mendoza-Garcia et al. (2021; FBrf0251121):

FBbt currently describes muscle founder cell (FBbt:00005084) as a precursor specific to somatic muscles:

• the definition states “there is one founder cell for each embryonic/larval somatic muscle”;
• the term is part_of some somatic muscle primordium.

Likewise, fusion competent cell (FBbt:00005085) is also part_of some somatic muscle primordium.

However it seems that visceral muscles (both circular and longitudinal) also originate from the fusion of a “founder cell” and several “fusion competent cells”, as first reported by San Martin et al., (2001; FBrf0138374).

So we might need to either

• make our muscle founder cell and fusion competent cell neutral wrt to the somatic/visceral distinction, or
• create distinct terms for visceral muscle founder and fusion-competent cells.

[Clare72]

I think I would go with the first option - definitions and labels are not specific to somatic muscle (saying there is one founder for each somatic muscle does not preclude the existence of founders for visceral muscles), so just need to change the logical axioms.

[gouttegd]

Agree. San Martin et al. (2001) explicitly state that the founder cells of visceral muscles might not actually be any different from those of somatic muscles (apart from their slightly different locations in the mesoderm), so we might not need two distinct terms.