A determination of critical periods in development at the Drosophila larval neuromuscular junction

A central objective in the field of neurobiology is to understand the developmental plasticity of neurons. The pursuit of this objective has revealed the presence of critical periods in neural development. This idea holds that there are particular developmental time windows in which certain kinds of neural remodeling can take place. Here I have taken advantage of the Drosophila melanogaster neuromuscular junction (NMJ) to investigate developmental plasticity and critical period determination of defined identifiable neurons at this model synapse. My data support the view that individual neuromuscular synapses in Drosophila melanogaster larvae possess critical periods for synapse development, but that the time windows for morphological and physiological plasticity are not identical. These studies open the door to further molecular genetic analysis of critical periods of synaptic development.