{"id":123066,"date":"2021-05-26T23:27:33","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T06:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/the-number-of-neurons-in-drosophila-and-mosquito-brains"},"modified":"2021-05-26T23:27:33","modified_gmt":"2021-05-27T06:27:33","slug":"the-number-of-neurons-in-drosophila-and-mosquito-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/the-number-of-neurons-in-drosophila-and-mosquito-brains","title":{"rendered":"The number of neurons in Drosophila and mosquito brains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-number-of-neurons-in-drosophila-and-mosquito-brains.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Various insect species serve as valuable model systems for investigating the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which a brain controls sophisticated behaviors. In particular, the nervous system of <em>Drosophila melanogaster<\/em> has been extensively studied, yet experiments aimed at determining the number of neurons in the <em>Drosophila<\/em> brain are surprisingly lacking. Using isotropic fractionator coupled with immunohistochemistry, we counted the total number of neuronal and non-neuronal cells in the whole brain, central brain, and optic lobe of <em>Drosophila melanogaster<\/em>. For comparison, we also counted neuronal populations in three divergent mosquito species: <em>Aedes aegypti<\/em>, <em>Anopheles coluzzii<\/em> and <em>Culex quinquefasciatus<\/em>. The average number of neurons in a whole adult brain was determined to be 199380 \u00b13400 cells in <em>D<\/em>. <em>melanogaster<\/em>, 217910 \u00b16180 cells in <em>Ae<\/em>. <em>aegypti<\/em>, 223020 \u00b1 4650 cells in <em>An<\/em>. <em>coluzzii<\/em> and 225911\u00b17220 cells in <em>C<\/em>. <em>quinquefasciatus<\/em>. The mean neuronal cell count in the central brain vs. optic lobes for <em>D<\/em>. <em>melanogaster<\/em> (101140 \u00b13650 vs. 107270 \u00b1 2720), <em>Ae<\/em>. <em>aegypti<\/em> (109140 \u00b1 3550 vs. 112000 \u00b1 4280), <em>An<\/em>. <em>coluzzii<\/em> (105130 \u00b1 3670 vs. 107140 \u00b1 3090), and <em>C<\/em>. <em>quinquefasciatus<\/em> (108530 \u00b17990 vs. 110670 \u00b1 3950) was also estimated. Each insect brain was comprised of 89% \u00b1 2% neurons out of its total cell population. Isotropic fractionation analyses did not identify obvious sexual dimorphism in the neuronal and non-neuronal cell population of these insects. Our study provides experimental evidence for the total number of neurons in <em>Drosophila<\/em> and mosquito brains.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Citation: <\/strong>Raji JI, Potter CJ (2021) The number of neurons in <em>Drosophila<\/em> and mosquito brains. PLoS ONE 16: e0250381. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Editor: <\/strong>Matthieu Louis, University of California Santa Barbara, UNITED STATES.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Various insect species serve as valuable model systems for investigating the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which a brain controls sophisticated behaviors. In particular, the nervous system of Drosophila melanogaster has been extensively studied, yet experiments aimed at determining the number of neurons in the Drosophila brain are surprisingly lacking. Using isotropic fractionator coupled with [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}