Virtual Fly Brain Drosophila CNS atlas
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Cell Types

Cell type annotations on VFB.

Neurons on VFB are annotated with cell types from the Drosophila Anatomy Ontology (FBbt).

A FlyWire MBON01 neuron

Why do we use ontology terms?

  • Each term represents a concept of a cell type, with a definition based on referenced publications: Definition for 'mushroom body output neuron 1'
  • As well as a label, each term has a collection of synonyms, facilitating identification even when the same type has been referred to by different names in different sources: Label and synonyms for 'mushroom body output neuron 1'
  • Hierarchical – e.g. specific terms for MBON01, MBON02 etc., but also grouped by a general MBON term and all under ‘adult neuron’
  • Neurons of the same type in multiple datasets can be linked to the same ontology term
  • Persistent, resolvable identifiers to uniquely identify cell types e.g. https://virtualflybrain.org/reports/FBbt_00100234

We also use terms from the Drosophila Anatomy Ontology to annotate CNS regions (for the Template ROI Browser tool and neuron connectivity per region query) and other anatomical features.