candidate glutamatergic neurons in the visual system of drosophila候选人glutamatergic神经元在果蝇的视觉系统.pdfVIP

Candidate Glutamatergic Neurons in the Visual System of Drosophila Shamprasad Varija Raghu*, Alexander Borst Department of Systems and Computational Neurobiology, Max-Planck-Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany Abstract The visual system of Drosophila contains approximately 60,000 neurons that are organized in parallel, retinotopically arranged columns. A large number of these neurons have been characterized in great anatomical detail. However, studies providing direct evidence for synaptic signaling and the neurotransmitter used by individual neurons are relatively sparse. Here we present a first layout of neurons in the Drosophila visual system that likely release glutamate as their major neurotransmitter. We identified 33 different types of neurons of the lamina, medulla, lobula and lobula plate. Based on the previous Golgi-staining analysis, the identified neurons are further classified into 16 major subgroups representing lamina monopolar (L), transmedullary (Tm), transmedullary Y (TmY), Y, medulla intrinsic (Mi, Mt, Pm, Dm, Mi Am), bushy T (T), translobula plate (Tlp), lobula intrinsic (Lcn, Lt, Li), lobula plate tangential (LPTCs) and lobula plate intrinsic (LPi) cell types. In addition, we found 11 cell types that were not described by the previous Golgi analysis. This classification of candidate glutamatergic neurons fosters the future neurogenetic dissection of information processing in circuits of the fly visual system. Citation: Raghu SV, Borst A (2011) Candidate Glutamatergic Neurons in the Visual System of Drosophila. PLoS ONE 6(5): e19472. doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0019472 Editor: Brian D. McCabe, Columbia University, United States of America Received February 7, 2011; Accepted April 3, 2011; Published May 5, 2011 Copyright: 2011 Raghu, Borst.