PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Alicia Estacio-Gómez
AU  - Amira Hassan
AU  - Emma Walmsley
AU  - Lily Lee
AU  - Tony D. Southall
TI  - Dynamic neurotransmitter specific transcription factor expression profiles during <em>Drosophila</em> development
AID  - 10.1101/830315
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 830315
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/11/05/830315.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/11/05/830315.full
AB  - The remarkable diversity of neurons in the nervous system is generated during development, when properties such as cell morphology, receptor profiles and neurotransmitter identities are specified. Neurotransmitters are essential for neuronal communication, and transcription factors are the key determinants of neurotransmitter fate. In order to gain a greater understanding of neurotransmitter specification we profiled the transcription state of cholinergic, GABAergic and glutamatergic neurons in vivo at multiple developmental time points. We identified 86 differentially expressed transcription factors that are uniquely enriched, or uniquely depleted, in a specific neurotransmitter subtype. Some transcription factors show a similar profile across development, others only show enrichment or depletion at specific developmental stages. Profiling of acj6 (cholinergic enriched) and Ets65A (cholinergic depleted) binding sites in vivo reveals that they both directly bind the ChAT locus, in addition to a wide spectrum of other key neuronal differentiation genes. Our data underlines that, similar to C. elegans, there are no simple transcription factor codes for neurotransmitter type specification, and provides a useful resource for studying the developmental basis of neurotransmitter specification in Drosophila and other model systems.