Abstract
Genetic techniques have shed new light on the organization of the neurons in the ventral nervous system of the fruit fly.
Highlights
Related research article Harris RM, Pfeiffer BD, Rubin GM, Truman JW. 2015
Neurons can be divided into classes based on their structure, and many animal movements are controlled by circuits that contain more than one class of neuron. Some of these movements are relatively simple, such as the twitch of a limb, whereas others are more complex, such as walking and flying (Garcia-Campmany et al, 2010; Grillner and El Manira, 2015). Studies of both invertebrate and vertebrate neuronal circuits have provided an increasing amount of evidence that neurons in the same class develop from the same progenitor cell and/or progenitor cells
In the fruit fly and other insects, the ventral nervous system is the equivalent of the vertebrate spinal cord, and develops from progenitor cells called neuroblasts
Summary
Related research article Harris RM, Pfeiffer BD, Rubin GM, Truman JW. 2015. Neuron hemilineages provide the functional ground plan for the Drosophila ventral nervous system. eLife 4:e04493. doi: 10.7554/ eLife.04493 Image A decapitated fly moves in response to the stimulation of one of its hemilineages. Neurons can be divided into classes based on their structure, and many animal movements (locomotive behaviors) are controlled by circuits that contain more than one class of neuron. In eLife, Jim Truman and colleagues at the Janelia Research Campus – including Robin Harris as first author – report how different developmentally-related classes of neurons in the ventral nervous system of the fruit fly Drosophila work to control movement (Harris et al, 2015).
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