RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Color depth MIP mask search: a new tool to expedite Split-GAL4 creation
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 318006
DO 10.1101/318006
A1 Hideo Otsuna
A1 Masayoshi Ito
A1 Takashi Kawase
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/05/09/318006.abstract
AB The GAL4-UAS system has proven its versatility in studying the function and expression patterns of neurons the Drosophila central nervous system. Although the GAL4 system has been used for 25 years, recent genetic intersectional tools have enabled genetic targeting of very small numbers of neurons aiding in the understanding of their function. This split-GAL4 system is extremely powerful for studying neuronal morphology and the neural basis of animal behavior. However, choosing lines to intersect that have overlapping patterns restricted to one to a few neurons has been cumbersome. This challenge is now growing as the collections of GAL4 driver lines has increased. Here we present a new method and software plug-in for Fiji to dramatically improve the speed of querying large databases of potential lines to intersect and aid in the split-GAL4 creation. We also provide pre-computed datasets for the Janelia GAL4 (5,738 lines) and VT GAL4 (7,429 lines) of the Drosophila central nervous system (CNS). The tool reduced our split-GAL4 creation effort dramatically.