Three-dimensional reconstruction of brain-wide wiring networks in Drosophila at single-cell resolution.
BACKGROUND
Animal behavior is governed by the activity of interconnected brain circuits. Comprehensive brain wiring maps are thus needed in order to formulate hypotheses about information flow and also to guide genetic manipulations aimed at understanding how genes and circuits orchestrate complex behaviors.


RESULTS
To assemble this map, we deconstructed the adult Drosophila brain into approximately 16,000 single neurons and reconstructed them into a common standardized framework to produce a virtual fly brain. We have constructed a mesoscopic map and found that it consists of 41 local processing units (LPUs), six hubs, and 58 tracts covering the whole Drosophila brain. Despite individual local variation, the architecture of the Drosophila brain shows invariance for both the aggregation of local neurons (LNs) within specific LPUs and for the connectivity of projection neurons (PNs) between the same set of LPUs. An open-access image database, named FlyCircuit, has been constructed for online data archiving, mining, analysis, and three-dimensional visualization of all single neurons, brain-wide LPUs, their wiring diagrams, and neural tracts.


CONCLUSIONS
We found that the Drosophila brain is assembled from families of multiple LPUs and their interconnections. This provides an essential first step in the analysis of information processing within and between neurons in a complete brain.
Brain Research Center, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan, R.O.C. aschiang@life.nthu.edu.tw
Ann-Shyn
AS
Chiang
Chih-Yung
CY
Lin
Chao-Chun
CC
Chuang
Hsiu-Ming
HM
Chang
Chang-Huain
CH
Hsieh
Chang-Wei
CW
Yeh
Chi-Tin
CT
Shih
Jian-Jheng
JJ
Wu
Guo-Tzau
GT
Wang
Yung-Chang
YC
Chen
Cheng-Chi
CC
Wu
Guan-Yu
GY
Chen
Yu-Tai
YT
Ching
Ping-Chang
PC
Lee
Chih-Yang
CY
Lin
Hui-Hao
HH
Lin
Chia-Chou
CC
Wu
Hao-Wei
HW
Hsu
Yun-Ann
YA
Huang
Jing-Yi
JY
Chen
Hsin-Jung
HJ
Chiang
Chun-Fang
CF
Lu
Ru-Fen
RF
Ni
Chao-Yuan
CY
Yeh
Jenn-Kang
JK
Hwang
D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004330:Drosophila / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D009474:Neurons / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology