circadian control of dendrite morphology in the visual system of drosophila melanogaster昼夜的树突形态控制黑腹果蝇的视觉系统.pdfVIP

Circadian Control of Dendrite Morphology in the Visual System of Drosophila melanogaster 1 1,2¤ 1 Paweł Weber , Elz_bieta Kula-Eversole , Elz_bieta Pyza * ´ 1 Department of Cytology and Histology, Institute of Zoology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland, 2 Department of Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and National Center for Behavioral Genomics, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, United States of America Abstract Background: In the first optic neuropil (lamina) of the fly’s visual system, monopolar cells L1 and L2 and glia show circadian rhythms in morphological plasticity. They change their size and shape during the day and night. The most pronounced changes have been detected in circadian size of the L2 axons. Looking for a functional significance of the circadian plasticity observed in axons, we examined the morphological plasticity of the L2 dendrites. They extend from axons and harbor postsynaptic sites of tetrad synaptic contacts from the photoreceptor terminals. Methodology/Principal Findings: The plasticity of L2 dendrites was evaluated by measuring an outline of the L2 dendritic trees. These were from confocal images of cross sections of L2 cells labeled with GFP. They were in wild-type and clock mutant flies held under different light conditions and sacrified at different time points. We found that the L2 dendrites are longest at the beginning of the day in both males and females. This rhythm observed under a day/night regime (LD) was maintained in constant darkness (DD) but not in continuous light (LL). This rhythm was not present in the arrhythmic per01 mutant in LD or in DD. In the clock photoreceptor cryb mutant the rhyth