Neurotransmitter identity is acquired in a lineage-restricted manner in the Drosophila CNS
- Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, United States
- Albert Einstein College of Medicine, United States
Abstract
The vast majority of the adult fly ventral nerve cord is composed of 34 hemilineages, which are clusters of lineally related neurons. Neurons in these hemilineages use one of the three fast-acting neurotransmitters (acetylcholine, GABA, or glutamate) for communication. We generated a comprehensive neurotransmitter usage map for the entire ventral nerve cord. We did not find any cases of neurons using more than one neurotransmitter, but found that the acetylcholine specific gene ChAT is transcribed in many glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons, but these transcripts typically do not leave the nucleus and are not translated. Importantly, our work uncovered a simple rule: All neurons within a hemilineage use the same neurotransmitter. Thus, neurotransmitter identity is acquired at the stem cell level. Our detailed transmitter- usage/lineage identity map will be a great resource for studying the developmental basis of behavior and deciphering how neuronal circuits function to regulate behavior.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files
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Author details
Funding
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Tzumin Lee
- James W Truman
NIH Office of the Director (NS083086)
- Robert H Singer
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2019, Lacin 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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Neurotransmitter identity is acquired in a lineage-restricted manner in the Drosophila CNS
eLife 8:e43701.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.43701
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