Fig. 1: Morphological characterization of projection neurons (PNs) in A. aegypti.

a Schematic showing the experimental preparation for in vivo patch-clamp recording. The animal was fixed with glue and wax to a recording chamber placed under the objective lens of an upright, fixed-stage microscope. Odors were delivered to the olfactory organs below the recording chamber and removed using a vacuum tube (not shown) placed behind the animal. Recordings were obtained from cell bodies present in the dorsal and the lateral regions around the antennal lobe (AL) using a glass pipette through a hole in the head cuticle. b Examples of some morphological sub-classes of PNs, including 4 uniglomerular (out of 201 obtained), and 2 multiglomerular (out of 7 obtained) PNs. For each PN, the top image shows the complete morphology in a maximum-intensity projection of the image stack (the region displayed includes ipsilateral AL, mushroom body, and protocerebrum); the bottom image shows the dendritic innervations in a maximum-intensity projection from the AL. Co-ordinate axes: dorsal-ventral (d-v), anterior-posterior (a-p), and medial-lateral (m–l). Green: biocytin or lucifer yellow used to fill the cell; magenta: Dncad (neuropil marker). Scale bars, 50 µm. c Top image shows the axonal reconstructions of 94 PNs registered to an adult female Aedes aegypti brain template. Each PN sub-class is shown in a different color. The bottom image zooms into the LH projections of PNs innervating dorsomedial glomeruli (red) and other glomeruli (blue). d The matrix shows the NBLAST scores (after z-score normalization) indicating the morphological similarity in the protocerebral projections of pairs of PNs. PNs are ordered by glomerular identity, marked by the boxes along the diagonal and the labels along the axes. e NBLAST scores, indicating morphological similarity of projections to the lateral horn, were higher for pairs of PNs belonging to the same glomerulus (n = 171) than for pairs of PNs belonging to different glomeruli (n = 4200). P value from two-sided signed-rank test is displayed. Red lines: means, error bars: s.e.m. Source data for (d, e) are provided as a Source Data file.