Schematic drawing of zebrafish is modified from Fig. 1 of a previous publication³⁷ (with permission from Frontier in Cellular Neuroscience). (a) Workflow of experimental design for RNA-seq and transcriptome analysis for 1,000 individually collected hair cells and nsSCs. (b) GFP-expressing hair cells in saccule and lagena of zebrafish inner ear. (c) Suction pipette technique used to manually collect individual hair cells and nsSCs. (d) Examples of GFP-expressing hair cells. Only those cells that had both GFP expression and stereocilia bundles were selected. (e) Example of GFP-expressing cells without visible stereocilia bundles. The identify of these cells was unknown, so they were not collected. (f) An example of a nsSC with no GFP expression. An equal number of nsSCs was individually collected for comparison with hair cells. Bars: 20 μm (b), 10 μm (c), and 10 μm (d–f).