Morphology of individual TL axons innervating SM. (A) Dorsal view confocal image of the midbrain from a 7 dpf Tg(hspGGFF23C:gal4,uas:NTR-mCherry) larva containing several labeled neurons in the left TL lobe and a single neuron in the right TL lobe, indicated by boxed region. (B) Magnified view of boxed region in (A). (C) Skeletonized tracing of SMTL neuron in (B). Note large, sparsely branched arbor. (D) Skeletonized tracings of three SMTL neurons. Note large, sparsely branched arbor and small dendritic arbors within TL. (E) Dorsal view inverted fluorescence image of the brain of a Tg(HuC:lynTagRFP-t) larva. Overlayed on the right tectum are reconstructed and appropriately scaled tracings of three SMTL neurons in (D) that innervated SM. Note that the three SMTL neurons vary in their cell body position within TL, but all are located in ipsilateral TL. Overlayed on the left tectum are convex polygons that summarize the SM area spanned by each of the three SMTL axons shown at right. (F–I) Quantification of retinotopic area, branchpoint number, total neurite length, and branching density for 16 reconstructed SMTL axons obtained from 12 larvae. Scale bar: 120 μm in (A), 80 μm in (B–D), and 90 μm in (E).
|