Studying the in situ organization of the spectrin cortical skeleton of axons and dendrites in drosophila melanogaster

N. G. GAZAL; E. A. GOROSTIZA; N. UNSAIN

Congreso; XXXV Congreso Reunión Anual ? Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencia. Modalidad Virtual; 2020

Argentine Society for Research in Neuroscience

Actin, spectrin and associated proteins form a periodic scaffold in neuronal axons anddendrites, with a period below the resolution limit of conventional microscopy. ThisMembrane-associated Periodic Skeleton (MPS) is present in all neurons examined acrossanimals, suggesting it is a conserved and fundamental component of neuronal extensions.Most studies have been performed in cultured neurons. However, it is known that axonsand dendrites do not develop and behave the same in culture compared to their naturalenvironments, where are exposed to particular diffusive and fixed cues in 3D. In thisrecently-started project, we will first describe the normal abundance, distribution andregularity of the MPS in axons and dendrites of neurons in the nervous system ofDrosophila melanogaster. We will also study how the MPS responds to physiologicalchanges in the architecture of the neuronal processes. For this purpose, we selected twogroups of neurons with well characterized axonal and dendritic structures, that alsosuffer dendritic remodeling during development (ppk neurons in larvae) and axonalremodeling on a daily fashion (pdf neurons in adult fly). Image acquisition will beperformed by super-resolution approaches (Expansion Microscopy and STED). Weexpect that in tissue, a given neuronal population will share a characteristic arrangementof their MPS across their distinct subdomains and will be consistently remodeled duringphysiological changes in neuronal architecture.