Volume X-Ray Micro-Computed Tomography Analysis of the Early Cephalized Central Nervous System in a Marine Flatworm, Stylochoplana pusilla

Platyhelminthes are a phylum of simple bilaterian invertebrates with prototypic body systems. Compared with non-bilaterians such as cnidarians, the bilaterians are likely to exhibit integrated free-moving behaviors, which require a concentrated nervous system “brain” rather than the distributed nervous system of radiatans. Marine flatworms have an early cephalized ‘central’ nervous system compared not only with non-bilaterians but also with parasitic flatworms or freshwater planarians. In this study, we used the marine flatworm Stylochoplana pusilla as an excellent model organism in Platyhelminthes because of the early cephalized central nervous system. Here, we investigated the three-dimensional structures of the flatworm central nervous system by the use of X-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) in a synchrotron radiation facility. We found that the obtained tomographic images were sufficient to discriminate some characteristic structures of the nervous system, including nerve cords around the cephalic ganglion, mushroom body-like structures, and putative optic nerves forming an optic commissure-like structure. Through the micro-CT imaging, we could obtain undistorted serial section images, permitting us to visualize precise spatial relationships of neuronal subpopulations and nerve tracts. 3-D micro-CT is very effective in the volume analysis of the nervous system at the cellular level; the methodology is straightforward and could be applied to many other non-model organisms.

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