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4 Publications

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    09/01/19 | BigStitcher: reconstructing high-resolution image datasets of cleared and expanded samples.
    Hörl D, Rojas Rusak F, Preusser F, Tillberg P, Randel N, Chhetri RK, Cardona A, Keller PJ, Harz H, Leonhardt H, Treier M, Preibisch S
    Nature Methods. 2019 Sep;16(9):870-74. doi: 10.1038/s41592-019-0501-0

    Light-sheet imaging of cleared and expanded samples creates terabyte-sized datasets that consist of many unaligned three-dimensional image tiles, which must be reconstructed before analysis. We developed the BigStitcher software to address this challenge. BigStitcher enables interactive visualization, fast and precise alignment, spatially resolved quality estimation, real-time fusion and deconvolution of dual-illumination, multitile, multiview datasets. The software also compensates for optical effects, thereby improving accuracy and enabling subsequent biological analysis.

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    Truman LabCardona Lab
    06/14/19 | Regulation of forward and backward locomotion through intersegmental feedback circuits in Drosophila larvae.
    Kohsaka H, Zwart MF, Fushiki A, Fetter RD, Truman JW, Cardona A, Nose A
    Nature Communications. 2019 Jun 14;10(1):2654. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-10695-y

    Animal locomotion requires spatiotemporally coordinated contraction of muscles throughout the body. Here, we investigate how contractions of antagonistic groups of muscles are intersegmentally coordinated during bidirectional crawling of Drosophila larvae. We identify two pairs of higher-order premotor excitatory interneurons present in each abdominal neuromere that intersegmentally provide feedback to the adjacent neuromere during motor propagation. The two feedback neuron pairs are differentially active during either forward or backward locomotion but commonly target a group of premotor interneurons that together provide excitatory inputs to transverse muscles and inhibitory inputs to the antagonistic longitudinal muscles. Inhibition of either feedback neuron pair compromises contraction of transverse muscles in a direction-specific manner. Our results suggest that the intersegmental feedback neurons coordinate contraction of synergistic muscles by acting as delay circuits representing the phase lag between segments. The identified circuit architecture also shows how bidirectional motor networks could be economically embedded in the nervous system.

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    Cardona LabTruman LabZlatic Lab
    01/29/19 | Neural substrates of Drosophila larval anemotaxis.
    Jovanic T, Winding M, Cardona A, Truman JW, Gershow M, Zlatic M
    Current Biology : CB. 2019 Jan 29;29(4):554-66. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.01.009

    Animals use sensory information to move toward more favorable conditions. Drosophila larvae can move up or down gradients of odors (chemotax), light (phototax), and temperature (thermotax) by modulating the probability, direction, and size of turns based on sensory input. Whether larvae can anemotax in gradients of mechanosensory cues is unknown. Further, although many of the sensory neurons that mediate taxis have been described, the central circuits are not well understood. Here, we used high-throughput, quantitative behavioral assays to demonstrate Drosophila larvae anemotax in gradients of wind speeds and to characterize the behavioral strategies involved. We found that larvae modulate the probability, direction, and size of turns to move away from higher wind speeds. This suggests that similar central decision-making mechanisms underlie taxis in somatosensory and other sensory modalities. By silencing the activity of single or very few neuron types in a behavioral screen, we found two sensory (chordotonal and multidendritic class III) and six nerve cord neuron types involved in anemotaxis. We reconstructed the identified neurons in an electron microscopy volume that spans the entire larval nervous system and found they received direct input from the mechanosensory neurons or from each other. In this way, we identified local interneurons and first- and second-order subesophageal zone (SEZ) and brain projection neurons. Finally, silencing a dopaminergic brain neuron type impairs anemotaxis. These findings suggest that anemotaxis involves both nerve cord and brain circuits. The candidate neurons and circuitry identified in our study provide a basis for future detailed mechanistic understanding of the circuit principles of anemotaxis.

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    Cardona Lab
    01/15/19 | Developmentally arrested precursors of pontine neurons establish an embryonic blueprint of the Drosophila central complex.
    Andrade IV, Riebli N, Nguyen BM, Omoto JJ, Cardona A, Hartenstein V
    Current Biology : CB. 2019 Jan 15;29(3):412-25. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.12.012

    Serial electron microscopic analysis shows that the Drosophila brain at hatching possesses a large fraction of developmentally arrested neurons with a small soma, heterochromatin-rich nucleus, and unbranched axon lacking synapses. We digitally reconstructed all 802 "small undifferentiated" (SU) neurons and assigned them to the known brain lineages. By establishing the coordinates and reconstructing trajectories of the SU neuron tracts, we provide a framework of landmarks for the ongoing analyses of the L1 brain circuitry. To address the later fate of SU neurons, we focused on the 54 SU neurons belonging to the DM1-DM4 lineages, which generate all columnar neurons of the central complex. Regarding their topologically ordered projection pattern, these neurons form an embryonic nucleus of the fan-shaped body ("FB pioneers"). Fan-shaped body pioneers survive into the adult stage, where they develop into a specific class of bi-columnar elements, the pontine neurons. Later born, unicolumnar DM1-DM4 neurons fasciculate with the fan-shaped body pioneers. Selective ablation of the fan-shaped body pioneers altered the architecture of the larval fan-shaped body primordium but did not result in gross abnormalities of the trajectories of unicolumnar neurons, indicating that axonal pathfinding of the two systems may be controlled independently. Our comprehensive spatial and developmental analysis of the SU neurons adds to our understanding of the establishment of neuronal circuitry.

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