实验仪器使用技术

For many decades, primary neuron cultures of Drosophila have been used complementary to work in vivo. Primary cultures were instrumental for the analysis of physiological properties of Drosophila neurons and synapses, and they were used for the analysis of developmental processes. Re ...

Functional and anatomical dissection of neural circuits is often hindered by the complexity of such systems. With only 10,000 neurons, the central nervous system of the Drosophila larva is at least one order of magnitude simpler than its adult counterpart. Despite this numerical simplici ...

The neural circuits that underlie motion vision in Drosophila provide an excellent model system for studying the logic of neural computation. A rich history of quantitative behavioral analysis has provided a detailed theoretical framework for investigating the neuronal basis of m ...

Drosophila has become a powerful experimental animal for the analysis of neuronal circuits and computations underlying innate behavior. In Drosophila, perturbational genetics is currently combined with the direct recording of neural activity in the CNS and eventually the quant ...

Neurons communicate at synapses by releasing neurotransmitters from synaptic vesicles, and this communication underlies information transfer in neuronal circuits. While classic methodologies including electrophysiology and electron microscopy are still extens ...

Single cell labeling allows identification of neuron types based on neurite trajectories, an essential step to understand brain anatomy and function. For years, various techniques have been developed to achieve in vivo single cell labeling. In Drosophila, several genetic mosaic app ...

Studying the formation of neural networks requires a thorough understanding of their constituent neurons, their development, connectivity and electrical properties. Neuronal morphology is a key element, encompassing parameters important for neuronal function: projec ...

Drosophila combines advanced genetics with a brain of ideal size for high-resolution imaging in toto. However, imaging of intracellular compartments pushes the limits of light microscopy in every system, and at the subcellular level the small size of fly neurons presents a challenge. In th ...

The description of the anatomy of neural circuits provides a framework for predictions about their �functions. During the last 2 decades, the explosion of genetically encoded tools for manipulating and visualizing the neural circuits in the fruit fly allowed important advances in corr ...

The Drosophila brain with an estimated 100,000 neurons provides at once an excellent opportunity to describe a complex brain in great detail and to identify the genetic and neurobiological basis of a wide array of behaviors. Furthermore, the sequencing of the genome with the concurrent iden ...

The Ras-controlled extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) pathway mediates a large number of cellular events, from proliferation to survival, from synaptic plasticity to memory formation. In order to study the role of the two major ERK isoforms in the brain, ERK1 and ERK2, we have gener ...

Glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) occupies an unusual niche in cellular regulation via its negative regulation of a series of important cellular target proteins coupled with its own sensitivity to several major signaling pathways including the Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, and insulin syst ...

The erbB membrane tyrosine kinases (EGF receptor, erbB2, erbB3, and erbB4) are a family of structurally similar transmembrane proteins that act as receptors for the EGF and neuregulin (NRG) families of growth factors. ErbB receptors and their ligands are widely expressed by neurons and glia t ...

Cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (Cdk5) is a versatile protein kinase that plays a role in a variety of neuronal activities including neuronal migration during brain development, synaptic activities in mature neurons, and neuronal cell death in neurodegenerative diseases. However, the fu ...

Larval zebrafish are genetically tractable, easy to manipulate, and can be generated in large numbers. Their small size also makes them ideal for high-throughput screens for genes or pharmacological compounds that affect behavior. Thus, larval zebrafish are an ideal model system to inve ...

The light–dark preference test is one of the most commonly used anxiety models in animal preclinical studies. This test assesses spontaneous/natural tendency of an animal to explore/avoid certain zones of a given environment, for instance a half black-half white box. This test has been vali ...

One of the most commonly used behavioral endpoints measured in preclinical studies employing rodent models is thigmotaxis (or “wall-hugging”). Thigmotaxis is the propensity to avoid the center of an arena and stay or move in close proximity to the boundaries of the environment. Thigmotax ...

The attributes of the zebrafish (Danio rerio) make it an excellent model system for the development and discovery of new drugs. A robust behavioral assay is described that has been used successfully in studies of nicotine biology. The movement response of a group of larval zebrafish is measured o ...

The zebrafish is a promising model organism in vision research. To evaluate the visual function of laboratory animals, reliable behavioral assays are indispensable. The optokinetic response (OKR) assay has proven a valuable tool not only to screen for mutations affecting the visual sys ...

Olfactory responses develop early in larval zebrafish and are important throughout life to direct physiological and behavioral responses. Responses are evoked by odorants, which act as ligands to the olfactory neuron receptors. A response of immediate relevance is the detection of f ...