The morphological identity of insect dendrites

  • Dendrite morphology, a neuron's anatomical fingerprint, is a neuroscientist's asset in unveiling organizational principles in the brain. However, the genetic program encoding the morphological identity of a single dendrite remains a mystery. In order to obtain a formal understanding of dendritic branching, we studied distributions of morphological parameters in a group of four individually identifiable neurons of the fly visual system. We found that parameters relating to the branching topology were similar throughout all cells. Only parameters relating to the area covered by the dendrite were cell type specific. With these areas, artificial dendrites were grown based on optimization principles minimizing the amount of wiring and maximizing synaptic democracy. Although the same branching rule was used for all cells, this yielded dendritic structures virtually indistinguishable from their real counterparts. From these principles we derived a fully-automated model-based neuron reconstruction procedure validating the artificial branching rule. In conclusion, we suggest that the genetic program implementing neuronal branching could be constant in all cells whereas the one responsible for the dendrite spanning field should be cell specific.

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Metadaten
Author:Hermann CuntzORCiDGND, Friedrich Forstner, Jürgen Haag, Alexander Borst
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-311430
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000251
ISSN:1553-7358
ISSN:1553-734X
Pubmed Id:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19112481
Parent Title (English):PLoS Computational Biology
Publisher:PLoS
Place of publication:Lawrence, Kan.
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2008/12/26
Date of first Publication:2008/12/26
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2013/08/20
Volume:4
Issue:(12):e1000251
Page Number:7
Note:
Copyright: © 2008 Cuntz et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
HeBIS-PPN:352054069
Institutes:Medizin / Medizin
Dewey Decimal Classification:5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 59 Tiere (Zoologie) / 590 Tiere (Zoologie)
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Sammlung Biologie / Sondersammelgebiets-Volltexte
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 3.0