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The T1 cell in the adult Drosophila CNS
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Original images that appeared in Fig. 2 of:
Kei Ito, Heinz Sass, Joachim Urban, Alois Hofbauer and Stephan Schneuwly
(1997)
GAL4-responsive UAS-tau as a tool for studying the anatomy and development
of the Drosophila central nervous system
Cell and Tissue Research 290:1-10
To test whether the UAS-tau accurately visualise the whole axonal structure, we first studied the projection pattern of previously identified neurones. The T1 cell, identified using Golgi impregnation by Fischbach and Dittrich (1989), is a repetitive element in the optic lobes, which connects the lamina with the distal medulla. Screening through a collection of enhancer-trap lines kindly provided by K. Kaiser, we identified the strain C850, which selectively expresses GAL4 in the T1 cells.
(Abbreviations; la: lamina, me: medulla, lo: lobula, lo p: lobula plate, ret: retina; Bar=50 um)
Click each thumbnail image to see the original figure.
| A: Drawing of a T1 cell. The cell bodies are located near the surface of the medulla cortex (arrowhead). The cells send a fibre towards the distal surface of the medulla neuropile. At this point the fibre bifurcates, one branch ending in the medulla, the other projecting to the lamina. The endings in the medulla form a small, bushy arborisation in layer 2 (arrow in "me"), while in the lamina the arborisations form a basket-like structure embracing one cartridge (arrow in "la"). |
 | B: Golgi staining of a T1 cell (photo courtesy of Fischbach and Dittrich). The cell body is not shown in this preparation. |
| C: Cryostat section of the enhancer-trap line C850 crossed to UAS-lacZ and reacted for beta-galactosidase activity. Using the classical X-gal staining, it is possible to detect reaction products in cell bodies (arrowheads) and in arborisations of the medulla and the lamina (arrows), but the staining does not show all the T1 cells. Nor does it reveal their complete cell morphology. The cell body fibres (neurites) connecting the cell bodies and arborisations are not visible, and the arborisations in the lamina are incompletely stained. Immunohistochemical staining with anti-beta-galactosidase antibody also gave staining of similar quality (data not shown). |
 | D: Immunohistochemical staining of C850 crossed to UAS-tau. (A white box indicates the area shown in A and B.) In sharp contrast to the above picture is the staining using UAS-tau. Here, the complete cell morphology of all the T1 cells including cell bodies (arrowheads), arborisations (arrows) and fibres can be visualised. No difference from the Golgi-preparations (B) can be seen. Unlike Golgi impregnation, which can only randomly label one of the many T1 cells, the UAS-tau staining reveals the projections of all the neurones that belong to the same cell type. In addition, the sensitivity of the UAS-tau construct is higher than that of UAS-lacZ. This enabled us to identify at least one additional cell type with columnar arborisations in the medulla and projections to the lobula complex, which were not visible in the UAS-lacZ preparation (compare C and D). |
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GAL4-Responsive UAS-tau
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