Abstract
SummaryThe development of nervous system atlases is a fundamental pursuit in neuroscience, since they constitute a fundamental tool to improve our understanding of the nervous system and behavior. As such, neurotransmitter maps are valuable resources to decipher the nervous system organization and functionality. We present here the first comprehensive quantitative map of neurons found in the adult zebrafish spinal cord. Our study overlays detailed information regarding the anatomical positions, sizes, neurotransmitter phenotypes, and the projection patterns of the spinal neurons. We also show that neurotransmitter co-expression is much more extensive than previously assumed, suggesting that spinal networks are more complex than first recognized. As a first direct application, we investigated the neurotransmitter diversity in the putative glutamatergic spinal V2a-interneuron assembly. These studies shed new light on the diverse and complex functions of this important interneuron class in the neuronal interplay governing the precise operation of the central pattern generators.
Highlights
Neuronal networks in the spinal cord are able and sufficient to generate and control movements and receive and process sensory information (Arber, 2012; Goulding, 2009; Grillner and Jessell, 2009; Kiehn, 2016)
Neuronal Composition of the Adult Spinal Cord We first sought to determine the number of neurons in a representative hemisegment of the adult zebrafish spinal cord by using immunohistochemistry to detect the expression of the pan-neuronal marker HuC/D
The soma sizes of the labeled spinal neurons varied considerably, the vast majority were small or medium sized (41.17 G 0.63 mm2, n = 2085 neurons; Figure 1E). These results show that the adult spinal cord has a well-defined and diverse neuron population and provides a starting point for further characterizing the neurochemical architecture of adult zebrafish spinal cord networks
Summary
Neuronal networks in the spinal cord are able and sufficient to generate and control movements and receive and process sensory information (Arber, 2012; Goulding, 2009; Grillner and Jessell, 2009; Kiehn, 2016). Their functionality depends on the correct specification of different classes of neurons during development (Alaynick et al, 2011; Arber, 2012; Goulding, 2009; Jessell, 2000), which allows them to establish precise connections. Precise maps of neurotransmitter typology distributions facilitate this by revealing correlations between the anatomical and functional neuronal architectures
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