Dataset Information

Spatio-temporal pattern of neuronal differentiation in the Drosophila visual system: A user's guide to the dynamic morphology of the developing optic lobe.

ABSTRACT: Visual information processing in animals with large image forming eyes is carried out in highly structured retinotopically ordered neuropils. Visual neuropils in Drosophila form the optic lobe, which consists of four serially arranged major subdivisions; the lamina, medulla, lobula and lobula plate; the latter three of these are further subdivided into multiple layers. The visual neuropils are formed by more than 100 different cell types, distributed and interconnected in an invariant highly regular pattern. This pattern relies on a protracted sequence of developmental steps, whereby different cell types are born at specific time points and nerve connections are formed in a tightly controlled sequence that has to be coordinated among the different visual neuropils. The developing fly visual system has become a highly regarded and widely studied paradigm to investigate the genetic mechanisms that control the formation of neural circuits. However, these studies are often made difficult by the complex and shifting patterns in which different types of neurons and their connections are distributed throughout development. In the present paper we have reconstructed the three-dimensional architecture of the Drosophila optic lobe from the early larva to the adult. Based on specific markers, we were able to distinguish the populations of progenitors of the four optic neuropils and map the neurons and their connections. Our paper presents sets of annotated confocal z-projections and animated 3D digital models of these structures for representative stages. The data reveal the temporally coordinated growth of the optic neuropils, and clarify how the position and orientation of the neuropils and interconnecting tracts (inner and outer optic chiasm) changes over time. Finally, we have analyzed the emergence of the discrete layers of the medulla and lobula complex using the same markers (DN-cadherin, Brp) employed to systematically explore the structure and development of the central brain neuropil. Our work will facilitate experimental studies of the molecular mechanisms regulating neuronal fate and connectivity in the fly visual system, which bears many fundamental similarities with the retina of vertebrates.

SUBMITTER: Ngo KT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5825191 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Spatio-temporal pattern of neuronal differentiation in the Drosophila visual system: A user's guide to the dynamic morphology of the developing optic lobe.

Ngo Kathy T KT Andrade Ingrid I Hartenstein Volker V

Developmental biology 20170519 1

Visual information processing in animals with large image forming eyes is carried out in highly structured retinotopically ordered neuropils. Visual neuropils in Drosophila form the optic lobe, which consists of four serially arranged major subdivisions; the lamina, medulla, lobula and lobula plate; the latter three of these are further subdivided into multiple layers. The visual neuropils are formed by more than 100 different cell types, distributed and interconnected in an invariant highly reg ...[more]

PMID: 28533086

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Project description:BACKGROUND:Dysregulated gene expression patterns have been reported in several mental disorders. Limited by the difficulty of obtaining samples, psychiatric molecular mechanism research still relies heavily on clues from genetics studies. By using reference data from brain expression studies, multiple types of comprehensive gene expression pattern analysis have been performed on psychiatric genetic results. These systems-level spatial-temporal expression pattern analyses provided evidence on specific brain regions, developmental stages and molecular pathways that are possibly involved in psychiatric pathophysiology. At present, there is no online tool for such systematic analysis, which hinders the applications of analysis by non-informatics researchers such as experimental biologists and clinical molecular biologists. RESULTS:We developed the BEST web server to support Brain Expression Spatio-Temporal pattern analysis. There are three highlighted features of BEST: 1) visualization: it generates user-friendly visual results that are easy to interpret, including heatmaps, Venn diagrams, gene co-expression networks and cluster-based Manhattan gene plots; these results illustrate the complex spatio-temporal expression patterns, including expression quantification and correlation between genes; 2) integration: it provides comprehensive human brain spatio-temporal expression patterns by integrating data from currently available databases; 3) multi-dimensionality: it analyses input genes as both a whole set and several subsets (clusters) which are enriched according to co-expression patterns, and it also presents the correlation between genetic and expression data. CONCLUSIONS:To the best of our knowledge, BEST is the first data tool to support comprehensive human brain spatial-temporal expression pattern analysis. It helps to bridge disease-related genetic studies and mechanism studies, provides clues for key gene and molecular system identification, and supports the analysis of disease sensitive brain region and age stages. BEST is freely available at http://best.psych.ac.cn.

Dataset Information

Spatio-temporal pattern of neuronal differentiation in the Drosophila visual system: A user's guide to the dynamic morphology of the developing optic lobe.

Publications

Spatio-temporal pattern of neuronal differentiation in the Drosophila visual system: A user's guide to the dynamic morphology of the developing optic lobe.

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