824A Poster - 13. Neural development and physiology
Thursday April 07, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Authors:
Rana Eldanaf ¹; Claude Desplan ^{1, 2}

Affiliations:
1) Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; 2) Department of Biology, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA.

Keywords:
d. neuronal specification; q. vision

The Drosophila visual system is a powerful model for studying diverse aspects of neural circuit development. It is comprised of four neuropils, each essential for processing various visual stimuli. Projection neurons in the lobula (the lobula columnar neurons-LCNs), are thought to integrate different visual cues, send that information to the central brain leading to specific behavioral outputs in response to these stimuli. LCNs comprise ~20 morphological and functional subtypes. Interestingly, each LCN subtype forms a highly specific, neighboring yet non-overlapping synaptic domains in the brain called optic glomeruli. While there have been functional investigations of several LCN circuits, we know very little about how these are established. We screened Janelia Gal4, split-Gal4 and MiMIC lines to identity driver lines that are expressed in specific LCNs throughout development. We visualized axonal and dendritic growth using ;10xUASmyr::GFP; reporter line. To address wiring specificity, we analyzed transcriptomic data using scRNA-Seq to identify LCN specific markers. We identified a population of LCNs at larval stages of the optic lobe, which express the transcription factors toy and acj6. Our results indicate that they belong to three LCN subtypes previously identified to encode looming and the onset of edge. The high specificity of expression in this line provides an ideal tool for further developmental characterization of these neurons, as well as to understand how their highly precise patterns of axon-target matching occurs during development.