Drosophila connectome

A Drosophila connectome is a list of neurons in the Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) nervous system, and the chemical synapses between them. The fly's central nervous system consists of the brain plus the ventral nerve cord, and both are known to differ considerably between male and female. Complete or partial connectomes exist for the female adult brain, the male and female adult nerve cords, the male and female adult central nervous system (connected brain and nerve cord), and the female larval central nervous system. The available connectomes show only chemical synapses - other forms of inter-neuron communication such as gap junctions or neuromodulators are not represented. Drosophila melanogaster has a far larger and more complex nervous system than the other organisms for which complete connectomes exist (the nematode C. elegans, the sea squirt Ciona intestinalis, and the annelid Platynereis dumerilii). The neural circuit reconstruction methods for producing these datasets have developed over the course of many years, working up through various subsets of the nervous system for both male and female flies.