{"id":"doi:10.1016/j.cell.2024.03.016","kind":"article","title":"Neurotransmitter classification from electron microscopy images at synaptic sites in Drosophila melanogaster","authors":["Nils Eckstein","Alexander Shakeel Bates","Andrew S Champion","Michelle Du","Yijie Yin","Philipp Schlegel","Alicia Kun-Yang Lu","Jon Thomson Rymer","Samantha Finley-May","Tyler Paterson","Ruchi Parekh","Sven Dorkenwald","Arie Matsliah","Szi-chieh Yu","Claire E. McKellar","Amy Robinson Sterling","Katharina Eichler","Marta Costa","H. Sebastian Seung","Mala Murthy","Volker Hartenstein","Gregory S.X.E. Jefferis","Jan Funke"],"author_count":23,"year":2024,"published":"2024-05-01","venue":"Cell","cited_by":214,"doi":"10.1016/j.cell.2024.03.016","arxiv_id":null,"nct_id":null,"source_url":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.03.016","archive_url":"https://space-kitty.com/papers/doi:10.1016/j.cell.2024.03.016","updated":null,"pmid":"38729112","pmcid":null,"openalex_id":"W4396780652","pdf_url":"http://www.cell.com/article/S0092867424003076/pdf","abstract":"High-resolution electron microscopy of nervous systems has enabled the reconstruction of synaptic connectomes. However, we do not know the synaptic sign for each connection (i.e., whether a connection is excitatory or inhibitory), which is implied by the released transmitter. We demonstrate that artificial neural networks can predict transmitter types for presynapses from electron micrographs: a network trained to predict six transmitters (acetylcholine, glutamate, GABA, serotonin, dopamine, octopamine) achieves an accuracy of 87% for individual synapses, 94% for neurons, and 91% for known cell types across a D. melanogaster whole brain. We visualize the ultrastructural features used for prediction, discovering subtle but significant differences between transmitter phenotypes. We also analyze transmitter distributions across the brain and find that neurons that develop together largely express only one fast-acting transmitter (acetylcholine, glutamate, or GABA). We hope that our publicly available predictions act as an accelerant for neuroscientific hypothesis generation for the fly.","abstract_license":"CC-BY (publisher license, via OpenAlex)","license":"cc-by","is_open_access":true,"retracted":false,"peer_reviewed":null,"categories":["Neurobiology and Insect Physiology Research"],"details":null,"provenance":"openalex","attribution":"Abstract of \"Neurotransmitter classification from electron microscopy images at synaptic sites in Drosophila melanogaster\" by Nils Eckstein, Alexander Shakeel Bates, Andrew S Champion et al., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.03.016, used under its Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY); markup removed, otherwise unmodified.","topics":[{"slug":"connectomics","name":"Connectomics & Brain Mapping","domain_slug":"neuroscience"}],"cited_in_dossiers":[]}