The Drosophila connectome reveals axo-axonic synapses on descending neurons.
Overview
- Department of Biological Sciences, Florida Atlantic University, Jupiter, FL 33458, USA
- Harriet Wilkes Honors College, Florida Atlantic University, Jupiter, FL 33458, USA
Abstract
Axo-axonic synapses can veto, amplify, or synchronize spikes, yet their circuit-scale logic is unknown. Using the complete electron microscopy connectome of the adult male Drosophila, we charted every axo-axonic input onto the 1,314 descending neurons that carry brain commands to the ventral nerve cord. By definition, any synapse connected to a descending neuron within the cord is axo-axonic. Thus, we uncovered the ascending-descending and interneurons-descending axo-axonic relationship. Neurons with many partners (high-degree) integrate into the network without clustering into an interconnected “rich-club” of hubs. We identified an octet of ascending neurons (AN08B098) whose axo-axonic input to the giant fibers (DNp01) predicted modulation of the escape circuit. Immunostaining confirms their cholinergic identity, while optogenetic activation confirmed that this excitatory cohort increases DNp01 excitability, validating connectome-derived rules. Our work delivers a map of axo-axonic wiring in a complete ventral nerve cord connectome and provides constraints for models of fast motor control.
Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.
Code
No file of the authors' code could be read here: it is described below, and read at its source.
pena-rodrigo/ceballos_et_al2026_iscience
c8d36e2675de650f79b18b9f21e45a31d7328f91, 9 March 2026Availability: 1 check, the latest on 29 September 2026: the link answers
- 29 September 2026: the link answers
The paper's code and data availability statement is in the Data section.
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Data
Datasets cited
- data.mendeley.com/
datasets/ , at Mendeley Data; found in “Data and code availability”dh4vghvtpm
Data and code availability
Electrophysiology recordings have been deposited as.abf files at Mendeley Data: De Oliveira Pena, Rodrigo (2026), “ceballos2026_ephys_data
All original code used to create the connectome simulation is publicly available at GitHub: https://
Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.
Versions
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Version 1, 29 September 2026: the first record
Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 9 authors, 3 keywords, 2 funders, 60 references, 16 RRIDs.
Cite
This paper
Ceballos, C., Lopez, J., Roachford, T., Sanchez, D., Jara, S., Robbins, K., Spencer, C. L., Murphey, R., & Pena, R. F. (2026). The Drosophila connectome reveals axo-axonic synapses on descending neurons. iScience, 29(5), 115624. https://
BibTeX
@article{ceballos2026dro
author = {Ceballos, Cesar and Lopez, Juan and Roachford, Ty and Sanchez, Daniel and Jara, Sabrina and Robbins, Kelli and Spencer, Casey L and Murphey, Rodney and Pena, Rodrigo FO},
title = {{The Drosophila connectome reveals axo-axonic synapses on descending neurons}},
journal = {iScience},
year = {2026},
month = apr,
volume = {29},
number = {5},
pages = {115624},
publisher = {Elsevier},
issn = {2589-0042},
doi = {10.1016/
url = {https://
pmid = {42063566},
pmcid = {PMC13126034}
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
AU - Ceballos, Cesar
AU - Lopez, Juan
AU - Roachford, Ty
AU - Sanchez, Daniel
AU - Jara, Sabrina
AU - Robbins, Kelli
AU - Spencer, Casey L
AU - Murphey, Rodney
AU - Pena, Rodrigo FO
TI - The Drosophila connectome reveals axo-axonic synapses on descending neurons
T2 - iScience
J2 - iScience
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/
VL - 29
IS - 5
SP - 115624
SN - 2589-0042
PB - Elsevier
DO - 10.1016/
UR - https://
LA - en
ER -
CSL-JSON
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