Toh Yi Peng, Dion Emilie, Monteiro Antónia
Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 14 Science Drive 4, Singapore 117543, Singapore.
Yale-NUS College, 10 College Avenue West, Singapore 138609, Singapore.
Methods Protoc. 2021 Aug 5;4(3):53. doi: 10.3390/mps4030053.
Butterflies possess impressive cognitive abilities, and investigations into the neural mechanisms underlying these abilities are increasingly being conducted. Exploring butterfly neurobiology may require the isolation of larval, pupal, and/or adult brains for further molecular and histological experiments. This procedure has been largely described in the fruit fly, but a detailed description of butterfly brain dissections is still lacking. Here, we provide a detailed written and video protocol for the removal of adult, pupal, and larval brains. This species is gradually becoming a popular model because it uses a large set of sensory modalities, displays plastic and hormonally controlled courtship behaviour, and learns visual mate preference and olfactory preferences that can be passed on to its offspring. The extracted brain can be used for downstream analyses, such as immunostaining, DNA or RNA extraction, and the procedure can be easily adapted to other lepidopteran species and life stages.
蝴蝶具有令人印象深刻的认知能力，对这些能力背后神经机制的研究也越来越多。探索蝴蝶神经生物学可能需要分离幼虫、蛹和/或成虫的大脑，以进行进一步的分子和组织学实验。果蝇在很大程度上已有该操作流程的描述，但蝴蝶脑解剖的详细描述仍很缺乏。在此，我们提供一份关于摘除成虫、蛹和幼虫大脑的详细书面及视频方案。该物种正逐渐成为一个受欢迎的模型，因为它使用大量的感觉模式，表现出可塑性和受激素控制的求偶行为，并且能学习视觉配偶偏好和嗅觉偏好并传递给后代。提取的大脑可用于下游分析，如免疫染色、DNA或RNA提取，并且该操作流程可轻松适用于其他鳞翅目物种和生命阶段。
