Generation of Standard Drosophila Brain for Archiving Neural circuitry in 3D Image Database

• Main Authors: Chia-Chou Wu, 吳嘉洲
• Other Authors: Ann-Shyn Chiang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/91417825033270075115

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 生物科技研究所 === 96 === The study of behavior in terms of genes has been appreciated but the underlying mechanism has not been fully explained. Currently there are two major targets for researches in the field: the first is aimed at the hardware, the structure of the circuitry; the second is to study the information flow and its modification. Here, we focus on the “hardware” part, and try to propose a platform for building a complete circuitry. Since Drosophila melanogaster is recognized as a model system for studying the mechanism underlying the behavior, we choose this model organism as our framework to build the platform. Two methods were adopted to reconstruct an average model: the first one, the average shape is determined from the intensity map of the samples. In the second one, the average shape is determined from a 3D distance map of brain surfaces. The efficacy of these two methods is discussed. In addition to the average shape of whole brain, the average mushroom body is constructed and located within the average brain. A global coordination in the average brain is also assigned. Single neurons with their associated mushroom body, as the landmark are transformed into the standard brain accordingly. We demonstrated that the platform can be used to archive spatial patterns of gene expressions and single neurons and other types’ images of protein in Drosophila brain and many searching and analysis tools we have developed would give scientists an insight about how the brain works.