Fig. 6

Comparison of synaptic structures between the whole mount and squash preparations in VNCs with different synapse density. a Whole-mount and squash preparations of A6 abdominal hemisegments from 78 h AEL VNC, expressing the wild-type Rab4 (chaGal4, UAS-YFPRab4), constitutively-active Rab4 (chaGal4, UAS-YFPRab4^CA) and dominant-negative Rab4 (chaGal4, UAS-YFPRab4^DN) in cholinergic neurons, were stained with the Bruchpilot antibody Magnification ×40 oil objective, N.A. = 1.3; Scale bar: 25 µm for all images in the panel. Images are representatives of the sets used for quantification as described below. b, c Box plots of the total volume occupied by the synaptic contacts (b) and the number of voxels in discrete synaptic contacts (c) in a neuromere of the abdominal (A3–A6) hemisegments in the larvae expressing wild-type (WT), constitutively-active (CA), and dominant-negative (DN) forms of Rab4. Comparison between the genotypes was carried out using one way ANOVA and Bonferroni’s test. Pairwise comparison between the whole-mount and squash-prep estimates for each genotype was calculated using two-sample t test. Sample sizes for each genotype were n > 14 for the whole-mount estimates, and n ≥ 34 for the squash-prep; the p values indicated on each box were obtained with respect to the control values (YFP-Rab4^WT) from a set of whole-mount (shown in black) and squash-prep samples (shown in red). The underlined p values (* < 0.05, *** < 0.001) indicate a pair-wise comparison between the whole-mount and squash-prep from the same genetic background