Inter-individual stereotypy of the Platynereis larval visual connectome

Abstract

Developmental programs have the fidelity to form neural circuits with the same structure and function among individuals of the same species. It is less well understood, however, to what extent entire neural circuits of different individuals are similar. In a previous paper (Randel et al., 2014) we reported the neuronal connectome of the visual eye circuit from the head of a Platynereis dumerilii larva. We now report a full-body serial section transmission electron microscopy (ssTEM) dataset of another larva of the same age, for which we describe the connectome of the visual eyes and the larval eyespots. Anatomical comparisons and quantitative analyses of the two circuits reveal a high inter-individual stereotypy of the cell complement, neuronal projections and synaptic connectivity, including the left-right asymmetry in the connectivity of some neurons. Our work shows the extent to which the eye circuitry in Platynereis larvae is hard-wired.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Nadine Randel

    Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Réza Shahidi

    Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Csaba Verasztó

    Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Luis A Bezares-Calderón

    Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Steffen Schmidt

    Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Gáspár Jékely

    Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany
    For correspondence
    gaspar.jekely@tuebingen.mpg.de
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Eve Marder, Brandeis University, United States

Version history

  1. Received: April 17, 2015
  2. Accepted: June 9, 2015
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: June 10, 2015 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: June 23, 2015 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2015, Randel et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Nadine Randel
  2. Réza Shahidi
  3. Csaba Verasztó
  4. Luis A Bezares-Calderón
  5. Steffen Schmidt
  6. Gáspár Jékely
(2015)
Inter-individual stereotypy of the Platynereis larval visual connectome
eLife 4:e08069.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.08069

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