Developmentally Arrested Precursors of Pontine Neurons Establish an Embryonic Blueprint of the Drosophila Central Complex.

ABSTRACT: Serial electron microscopic analysis shows that the Drosophila brain at hatching possesses a large fraction of developmentally arrested neurons with a small soma, heterochromatin-rich nucleus, and unbranched axon lacking synapses. We digitally reconstructed all 802 "small undifferentiated" (SU) neurons and assigned them to the known brain lineages. By establishing the coordinates and reconstructing trajectories of the SU neuron tracts, we provide a framework of landmarks for the ongoing analyses of the L1 brain circuitry. To address the later fate of SU neurons, we focused on the 54 SU neurons belonging to the DM1-DM4 lineages, which generate all columnar neurons of the central complex. Regarding their topologically ordered projection pattern, these neurons form an embryonic nucleus of the

SUBMITTER: Andrade IV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6524766 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature