@article {68799, title = {Single-cell type analysis of wing premotor circuits in the ventral nerve cord of Drosophila melanogaster}, journal = {bioRxiv}, year = {2023}, month = {2023 Jun 01}, abstract = {

To perform most behaviors, animals must send commands from higher-order processing centers in the brain to premotor circuits that reside in ganglia distinct from the brain, such as the mammalian spinal cord or insect ventral nerve cord. How these circuits are functionally organized to generate the great diversity of animal behavior remains unclear. An important first step in unraveling the organization of premotor circuits is to identify their constituent cell types and create tools to monitor and manipulate these with high specificity to assess their function. This is possible in the tractable ventral nerve cord of the fly. To generate such a toolkit, we used a combinatorial genetic technique (split-GAL4) to create 195 sparse driver lines targeting 198 individual cell types in the ventral nerve cord. These included wing and haltere motoneurons, modulatory neurons, and interneurons. Using a combination of behavioral, developmental, and anatomical analyses, we systematically characterized the cell types targeted in our collection. Taken together, the resources and results presented here form a powerful toolkit for future investigations of neural circuits and connectivity of premotor circuits while linking them to behavioral outputs.

}, doi = {10.1101/2023.05.31.542897}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.05.31.542897}, author = {Erica Ehrhardt and Samuel C Whitehead and Shigehiro Namiki and Ryo Minegishi and Igor Siwanowicz and Kai Feng and Hideo Otsuna and FlyLight Project Team and Geoffrey W Meissner and David Stern and Jim Truman and David Shepherd and Michael H. Dickinson and Kei Ito and Barry J Dickson and Itai Cohen and Gwyneth M Card and Wyatt Korff} } @article {67914, title = {Neuromuscular embodiment of feedback control elements in Drosophila flight.}, journal = {bioRxiv}, year = {2022}, month = {2022 Feb 24}, abstract = {

While insects like\ Drosophila\ are flying, aerodynamic instabilities require that they make millisecond-timescale adjustments to their wing motion to stay aloft and on course. These stabilization reflexes can be modeled as a proportional-integral (PI) controller; however, it is unclear how such control might be instantiated in insects at the level of muscles and neurons. Here, we show that the b1 and b2 motor units{\textemdash}prominent components of the fly{\textquoteright}s steering muscles system{\textemdash}modulate specific elements of the PI controller: the angular displacement (integral, I) and angular velocity (proportional, P), respectively. Moreover, these effects are observed only during the stabilization of pitch. Our results provide evidence for an organizational principle in which each muscle contributes to a specific functional role in flight control, a finding that highlights the power of using top-down behavioral modeling to guide bottom-up cellular manipulation studies.

}, doi = {10.1101/2022.02.22.481344}, author = {Samuel C Whitehead and Sofia Leone and Theodore Lindsay and Matthew R Meiselman and Noah Cowan and Michael H Dickinson and Nilay Yapici and David Stern and Troy Shirangi and Itai Cohen} } @article {67949, title = {Neuromuscular embodiment of feedback control elements in Drosophila flight}, journal = {bioRxiv}, year = {2022}, month = {2022 Mar 07}, abstract = {

While insects like\ Drosophila\ are flying, aerodynamic instabilities require that they make millisecond-timescale adjustments to their wing motion to stay aloft and on course. These stabilization reflexes can be modeled as a proportional-integral (PI) controller; however, it is unclear how such control might be instantiated in insects at the level of muscles and neurons. Here, we show that the b1 and b2 motor units{\textemdash}prominent components of the fly{\textquoteright}s steering muscles system{\textemdash}modulate specific elements of the PI controller: the angular displacement (integral, I) and angular velocity (proportional, P), respectively. Moreover, these effects are observed only during the stabilization of pitch. Our results provide evidence for an organizational principle in which each muscle contributes to a specific functional role in flight control, a finding that highlights the power of using top-down behavioral modeling to guide bottom-up cellular manipulation studies.

}, doi = {10.1101/2022.02.22.481344}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.02.22.481344}, author = {Samuel C. Whitehead and Sofia Leone and Theodore Lindsay and Matthew Meiselman and Noah Cowan and Michael Dickinson and Nilay Yapici and David Stern and Troy Shirangi and Itai Cohen} }