Neuron tracing and quantitative analyses of dendritic architecture reveal symmetrical three-way-junctions and phenotypes of git-1 in C. elegans
Fig 6
Distributions of geometrical PVD elements in wild-type and git-1 mutant.
A. An image of a full PVD of a git-1 mutant, superimposed with color-coded morphological classes: class 1 (red), class 2 (green), class 3 (blue) and class 4 (yellow). B. Total PVD length for each morphological class for WT (blue) and git-1 mutant (red), normalized to the whole PVD midline length. C. The length density of junctions along the dendritic processes (reciprocal of the average length of dendrites between junctions normalized per 100 μm), for each morphological class. D. The length density of tips along the dendritic processes, normalized per 100μm, for each morphological class. E. The number of dendritic tips, normalized per 100μm of midline length, for each of the four morphological classes. F-I. Magnified regions of typical PVD morphologies in wild-type (F-G) and git-1 (H-I). Arrows show abnormal branching in git-1 compared to wild-type. This includes excess of junctions and tips, as well as neuronal processes that do not follow the pattern described in Figs 3 and 4. Dendritic segments color-coded according to classification as in panel A. In B-E, statistics were calculated using the nonparametric Mann–Whitney test. ***p < 0.0005, **p < 0.005, *p < 0.05. n = 10 wild-type animals, with 2620 junctions and 2228 tips. n = 10 git-1 animals, with 2631 junctions and 2308 tips. Bars show the mean value and error bars show the standard deviation.