A Systematic Nomenclature for the Drosophila Ventral Nerve Cord

Overview

Journal Neuron

Publisher Cell Press

Specialty Neurology

Date 2020 Sep 15

PMID 32931755

Citations 40

Authors

Robert Court

Shigehiro Namiki

J Douglas Armstrong

Jana Borner

Gwyneth Card

Marta Costa

Michael Dickinson

Carsten Duch

Wyatt Korff

Richard Mann

David Merritt

Rod K Murphey

Andrew M Seeds

Troy Shirangi

Julie H Simpson

James W Truman

John C Tuthill

Darren W Williams

David Shepherd

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Drosophila melanogaster is an established model for neuroscience research with relevance in biology and medicine. Until recently, research on the Drosophila brain was hindered by the lack of a complete and uniform nomenclature. Recognizing this, Ito et al. (2014) produced an authoritative nomenclature for the adult insect brain, using Drosophila as the reference. Here, we extend this nomenclature to the adult thoracic and abdominal neuromeres, the ventral nerve cord (VNC), to provide an anatomical description of this major component of the Drosophila nervous system. The VNC is the locus for the reception and integration of sensory information and involved in generating most of the locomotor actions that underlie fly behaviors. The aim is to create a nomenclature, definitions, and spatial boundaries for the Drosophila VNC that are consistent with other insects. The work establishes an anatomical framework that provides a powerful tool for analyzing the functional organization of the VNC.

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