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Journal of Neuroscience, Vol 11, 1-22, Copyright © 1991 by Society for Neuroscience
The posterior nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans: serial reconstruction of identified neurons and complete pattern of synaptic interactions
DH Hall and RL Russell
Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena 91125.
Serial-section electron microscopy has been used to reconstruct the
cellular architecture of the posterior nervous system of the nematode
Caenorhabditis elegans. Each of 40 neurons in the tail of the adult
hermaphrodite can be reproducibly and unambiguously identified by a set of
morphological features, including cell body position, fiber geometry and
size, and staining properties. A complete list of synapses has been
assembled for 2 isogenic animals, and these lists are compared with a third
isogenic animal reconstructed by White et al. (1986). The set of neurons
and their pattern of synaptic interactions is simple and reproducible. Most
of the cells are involved in sensory transduction or in local signal
processing to relay signals via a few interneurons to motoneurons and
thence to body muscles. Because the tail neurons are well separated and
fairly reproducible in position, the hermaphrodite tail lends itself to
laser-ablation studies of sensory processing (cf. Chalfie et al., 1985).
Most of the synapses in the tail are concentrated in the preanal ganglion.
Among the approximately 150 synapses there, about 85% are dyadic chemical
synapses. The dyadic synapses are involved in reproducible patterns that
have several interesting features. Most neurons synapse onto a few
preferred pairs of target cells, in patterns that suggest a combinatorial
model of synapse specification that may be open to genetic analysis.
Furthermore, most dyadic contacts A----B,C fit a pattern in which the 2
postsynaptic partners are involved elsewhere in unidirectional synapses
B----C. Thus, the dyadic synapse may serve to diverge sensory signals into
parallel pathways, which then reconverge. This divergence/reconvergence
pattern eventually directs processed sensory signals to the ventral cord
interneurons PVCL and PVCR. About 80-90% of the synapses fall into repeated
classes of synapses. Many of the remaining synapses are widely scattered
and irreproducible from one animal to the next. Some of these contacts may
be developmental mistakes reflecting a degree of "noise" in synapse
specification (Waddington, 1957).
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