1. Transgenic line for the identification of cholinergic release sites in Drosophila melanogaster
- Author
-
Alexander Borst and Katarina Pankova
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,endocrine system ,Genotype ,Physiology ,Vesicular Acetylcholine Transport Proteins ,Mi1 neurons ,Aquatic Science ,Animals, Genetically Modified ,03 medical and health sciences ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,Vesicular acetylcholine transporter ,medicine ,Animals ,Neurotransmitter ,Gene Knock-In Techniques ,Cholinergic neuron ,Molecular Biology ,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics ,Gene Editing ,biology ,Methods & Techniques ,Tm3 neurons ,biology.organism_classification ,Acetylcholine ,Cholinergic Neurons ,030104 developmental biology ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,Drosophila melanogaster ,chemistry ,VAChT ,nervous system ,Insect Science ,Motion vision ,Cholinergic ,Animal Science and Zoology ,Neuron ,CRISPR-Cas Systems ,Neuroscience ,medicine.drug - Abstract
The identification of neurotransmitter type used by a neuron is important for the functional dissection of neuronal circuits. In the model organism Drosophila melanogaster, several methods for discerning the neurotransmitter systems are available. Here, we expanded the toolbox for the identification of cholinergic neurons by generating a new line FRT-STOP-FRT-VAChT::HA that is a conditional tagged knock-in of the vesicular acetylcholine transporter (VAChT) gene in its endogenous locus. Importantly, in comparison to already available tools for the detection of cholinergic neurons, the FRT-STOP-FRT-VAChT::HA allele also allows for identification of the subcellular localization of the cholinergic presynaptic release sites in a cell-specific manner. We used the newly generated FRT-STOP-FRT-VAChT::HA line to characterize the Mi1 and Tm3 neurons in the fly visual system and found that VAChT is present in the axons of both cell types, suggesting that Mi1 and Tm3 neurons provide cholinergic input to the elementary motion detectors, the T4 neurons., Summary: A new transgenic Drosophila melanogaster line for the cell-type-specific identification of cholinergic release sites expands the available methods toolbox for discerning the neurotransmitter systems in the fly nervous system.
- Published
- 2017