Dataset · 2024
FANC — female adult nerve cord
The reconstructed female fly ventral nerve cord: 14,600 cell bodies and about 45 million synapses, with leg and wing motor neurons mapped to the muscles they drive.
| Species | Drosophila melanogaster (female) |
|---|---|
| Region | Ventral nerve cord |
| Cells | 14,600 neuronal cell bodies |
| Synapses | ~45 million |
| Modality | Serial-section TEM (GridTape), automated segmentation |
| Access | Open |
| Status | Released |
FANC is the segmentation and synapse reconstruction built on the Phelps, Hildebrand & Graham GridTape volume of the adult female Drosophila ventral nerve cord. Azevedo and colleagues report roughly 45 million synapses and 14,600 neuronal cell bodies, and paired the connectome with a motor-neuron atlas built from genetic driver lines and X-ray holographic nanotomography, so leg and wing motor neurons are matched to the muscles they innervate.
What it is good for. Circuits that end in a muscle. Most connectomes stop at the nervous system; this one identifies the effector, which makes it the clearest dataset for asking how a motor command is assembled.
What it does not support. Brain circuits — the VNC is the fly’s spinal-cord analogue, and descending input from the brain enters the volume already truncated. For circuits that cross that boundary, the BANC dataset unites the two.
Where these numbers come from. Azevedo et al. (2024), Nature 10.1038/s41586-024-07389-x — cell-body and synapse counts are taken from that paper's abstract. The underlying imagery is the Phelps, Hildebrand & Graham (2021) GridTape volume, catalogued separately. DOI 10.1038/s41586-024-07389-x.