Microengineered devices enable long-term imaging of the ventral nerve cord in behaving adult Drosophila

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 13; no. 1; pp. 5006 - 15
• Main Authors: Hermans, Laura, Kaynak, Murat, Braun, Jonas, Ríos, Victor Lobato, Chen, Chin-Lin, Friedberg, Adam, Günel, Semih, Aymanns, Florian, Sakar, Mahmut Selman, Ramdya, Pavan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 25-08-2022; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/1647/245/2225; 631/378/1687/1825; 631/378/2632/1823; 631/378/3920; Adaptation; Aging; Amputation; Animal behavior; Animals; Behavior, Animal; Caffeine; Chordotonal organ; Circuits; Diagnostic Imaging; Drosophila; Drosophila - metabolism; Drosophila melanogaster - metabolism; Drosophila Proteins - metabolism; Exoskeleton; Exoskeletons; Fruit flies; Humanities and Social Sciences; Implants; Ingestion; Insects; multidisciplinary; Nerve endings; Nerves; Neural networks; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Thorax; Toolkits; Ventral nerve cord
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32571-y

The dynamics and connectivity of neural circuits continuously change on timescales ranging from milliseconds to an animal’s lifetime. Therefore, to understand biological networks, minimally invasive methods are required to repeatedly record them in behaving animals. Here we describe a suite of devices that enable long-term optical recordings of the adult
Drosophila melanogaster
ventral nerve cord (VNC). These consist of transparent, numbered windows to replace thoracic exoskeleton, compliant implants to displace internal organs, a precision arm to assist implantation, and a hinged stage to repeatedly tether flies. To validate and illustrate our toolkit we (i) show minimal impact on animal behavior and survival, (ii) follow the degradation of chordotonal organ mechanosensory nerve terminals over weeks after leg amputation, and (iii) uncover waves of neural activity caffeine ingestion. Thus, our long-term imaging toolkit opens up the investigation of premotor and motor circuit adaptations in response to injury, drug ingestion, aging, learning, and disease.
Minimally invasive procedures for tracking neural activity are important for understanding of neural networks. Here the authors describe microfabricated implants and windows that enable long-term recordings of motor circuit activity in Drosophila, allowing them to watch how neurons change their structure and activity over weeks.