Drosophila brain resembling a human, complete map

[Anchor]
The entire map of the fruit fly brain, which shares 70% of human genes, has been completed.

Until now, the brain map of a caterpillar has been completed, but it is the first time that the brain of a creature this complex has been dug in detail.

I'm reporter Jang A-young.

[Reporter]
A map of the brain of an adult fruit fly.

It is a brain less than 1mm long, smaller than a grain of sesame seeds, but 139,000 neurons and 50 million synapses are intricately intertwined like a forest.

From the optic nerve of fruit flies to the endocrine, which produces various hormones, every corner of the brain has been mapped in 3D.

Drosophila, which shares about 70% of its human genes, responds to alcohol and coffee like humans, and sings songs for mating.

It takes less than two weeks to be born and die, making it a particularly important subject in medical research.

So far, there have been creatures whose entire brain map has been completed, but the brain structure has been much simpler, with 302 neurons in the pretty nematode and 3,000 fruit fly larva neurons.

[Kim Jin-seop / Professor of Life Sciences at Sungkyunkwan University (participating in the paper on the brain map of fruit flies): The completion of this fruit fly connectome laid the foundation for understanding the fundamentals of brain functions such as sensation, intelligence, memory, and behavioral control. [In this paper, it includes how the brain interprets the scene with its eyes, why it tastes sweet, and studies these questions with the help of Connectome]

The study started with 20 million high-resolution fruit fly brain photographs taken with an electron microscope in 2018.

Like putting together a small puzzle using artificial intelligence, it would have taken 50,000 years if humans had tracked neurons and synapses alone.We created a website called

'FlyWire', which was modified by hundreds of researchers and shared results to reduce time.

[BAE JUN HWAN / SNU researcher of basic science] AI is actually not perfect. People have to go through the revision process one by one. / A tool called "flywire" makes the modification possible. And it's a tool that allows multiple users to access and modify at the same time, and it was launched in 2019.]

It is estimated that the human brain consists of 86 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses.

The study published in Nature is expected to serve as the basis for understanding brain diseases, including dementia.

I'm YTN's Jang Ayoung.



Video editing;Kim Hee-jung