A genetically tractable jellyfish model for systems and evolutionary neuroscience.

ABSTRACT: Jellyfish are radially symmetric organisms without a brain that arose more than 500 million years ago. They achieve organismal behaviors through coordinated interactions between autonomously functioning body parts. Jellyfish neurons have been studied electrophysiologically, but not at the systems level. We introduce Clytia hemisphaerica as a transparent, genetically tractable jellyfish model for systems and evolutionary neuroscience. We generate stable F₁ transgenic lines for cell-type-specific conditional ablation and whole-organism GCaMP imaging. Using these tools and computational analyses, we find that an apparently diffuse network of RFamide-expressing umbrellar neurons is functionally subdivided into a series of spatially localized subassemblies whose synchronous activatio

SUBMITTER: Weissbourd B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8629132 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature