Anatomia Cerebri Insecti: Drosophila Brain Serial Sections
Scanned photographs of serial sections of wild-type adult fly brains. In three directions (frontal, horizontal, and sagittal). Annotated with names of major brain structures. 6-bit GIF format (about 6 MB in total).
Drosophila is a good model system for studying various aspects of brain development and brain function. Unfortunately, however, no convenient atlas has been published for the brain of the fruit fly. Although such an atlas would be extremely helpful, publishing one is of course not an easy task. This situation makes it difficult for novice people to quickly learn the complicated structure of the fly brain.
When I started working with Drosophila, I made serial sections of wild-type fly heads in three directions and have used the pictures privately for a reference purpose. Recently I scanned the pictures so that I can carry and see the images with my laptop computer (which was stolen after that, though...). Since such pictures would also be helpful for other fellow Drosophila researchers, I added a few annotations and decided to make them publicly available. The Flybase kindly allowed the to put the data into one of its directory.
This is by no means a real atlas, but it would be helpful as a quick reference as well as for educational purpose. This is also an exploration to see how one can share information using electronic media. For this matter it is an experimental version. Since the original pictures were not prepared for serious publication, the sections were not carefully aligned. The scanning resolution was kept minimum to keep the data size relatively small, thus saving the hard disk space and the network traffic. Though it was possible to make a better version with precisely aligned high-resolution images and detailed documents, I was not sure whether it is worth the extra effort.
I would appreciate any comments and suggestions, negative or positive, about this version. Please contact me if you have any idea to make it more useful.
General notes:
1.The following files are provided in this version.
All the pictures are saved as 6-bit GIF format data. They are pixel graphics; you cannot remove arrows and characters from the background photographs (see section 10).
2.Seven-micrometer serial sections were prepared from five-day old adult flies of the Canton-S strain. They are stained with silver nitrate (Bodian) and photographed using Zeiss 40x Nomarski optics. When scanning, I skipped every other section to keep the total volume not too large. Only one in four pictures was scanned for the sagittal sections of the optic lobe region (S12-S16).
3.I put the coordinate origin to the posterior end of the center opening of the ellipsoid body. This is close to, but not identical with, the coordinate origin used by Strausfeld for Musca domestica (1976). The distance from the origin is shown in the file name and at the top-left corner of each picture. The distance simply reflects the number of sections from the coordinate origin (hence 14 or 28-micrometer increments). The shrinkage of the specimen was not taken into account.
4.Several names of brain structures were annotated in the figure. The names should be consistent with the description of the Musca brain (Strausfeld, 1976). The names of the cervical fascicles were taken from Power (1948), the muscles and tracheae from Miller (1950).
5.No figure legends are available. Please refer to the articles listed at the end of this document.
Legal notes:
Since the digital image data can easily be duplicated and modified without losing quality, I will make the following notes:
6.You can freely view the pictures with your computer. You can print the pictures at your will. I am also happy if you use them in your talks and posters or distribute them to your students and colleagues. Please contact me if you want to use the pictures for other purposes.
7.You are not allowed to alter the content of the image. Please contact me if you need it.
8.You can freely, and you are encouraged to, distribute the data using network, floppy disks, and other media. Please do not forget to include this document when copying the data. The image data are free but not "public domain"; I reserve all the copyrights.
Technical notes:
9.Those who can afford photo-grade printers should have no problem in getting good hard copies of the pictures. Some of the recent laser printers can also generate good print outs. People with only an old 300-DPI laser printer (or inkjet printer) can still print acceptable copies in the following way, if an image manipulation software is available. The idea is
The original figures were made with a Macintosh computer and saved as PICT format data, with which the arrows and characters can be kept editable and separate from the scanned photographs. The PICT format, however, is not common in other computer systems.
Stocker, R. F., Lienhard, M. C., Borst, A., and Fischbach, K. F. (1990). Neuronal architecture of the antennal lobe in Drosophila melanogaster. Cell Tissue Res. 262, 9-34.
Bausenwein, B., Dittrich, A., and Fischbach, K. F. (1992). The optic lobe of Drosophila melanogaster. Cell Tissue Res. 267, 17-28.
Meinertzhagen, I. A., and Hanson, T. E. (1993). The Development of the Optic Lobe. In "The Development of Drosophila melanogaster" (M. Bate, and A. Martinez-Arias, Ed.), Vol. II, pp. 1363-1491. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor.