Overview
- An international team led by Harvard Medical School and Princeton published a complete wiring map of the adult Drosophila central nervous system and made the full connectome available as an open online resource.
- Researchers assembled the map from millions of electron-microscopy images that were stitched into a 3D volume using artificial-intelligence tools to identify neurons and synapses at single-synapse resolution.
- The connectome links the brain and the nerve cord across roughly 160,000 central neurons and shows that much motor control is implemented locally in nerve-cord circuits rather than centrally in the brain.
- Although the map does not yet cover the fly’s entire body, the team connected central neurons to identifiable neurons in appendages and sensory organs using literature-based matching and plans to add molecular and neuropeptide annotations.
- By releasing the dataset openly, the authors aim to speed experiments that test circuit function, enable cross-species comparisons of nervous-system organization, and support translational studies of how brains coordinate behavior.