The neural circuit wiring diagram varies across sexes. In the adult fly, the gene fruitless has been associated with prominent changes across the nervous system between males and females. In the larva, we know that the female nervous system has about 1,000 more neurons than the male, but we don’t know which ones, nor whether neural circuits are the same or significantly different. In this project, the student will image whole central nervous systems of larval Drosophila melanogaster for males and females, map their connectomes with automated methods, and compare the two to identify what is common and what is different across their brains. An enterprising student will see to then test any differing circuits with behavioural experiments using single-neuron genetic driver lines and optogenetics.

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References

Winding, M., Pedigo, B.D., Barnes, C.L., Patsolic, H.G., Park, Y., Kazimiers, T., Fushiki, A., Andrade, I.V., Khandelwal, A., Valdes-Aleman, J., Li, F., Randel, N., Barsotti, E., Correia, A., Fetter, R.D., Hartenstein, V., Priebe, C.E., Vogelstein, J.T., Cardona, A., Zlatic, M. (2023)
The connectome of an insect brain
Science 379(6636):

Jiao, W., Spreemann, G., Ruchti, E., Banerjee, S., Vernon, S., Shi, Y., Stowers, R.S., Hess, K., McCabe, B.D. (2022)
Intact Drosophila central nervous system cellular quantitation reveals sexual dimorphism
Elife 11: e74968