Congratulations to Victoria Tweedie-Pitre, who has just published her honours thesis research exploring some unexpected complexities of the octopaminergic neuroanatomy of Lymnaea. Kudos also to Yulia Reunova who led the development of the new in situ hybridization chain reaction method in our lab.

The overall finding was that, as expected, mRNA and protein for Tyramine 𝛽 Hydroxylase, the enzyme that produces octopamine, had essentially identical distributions in the brain of the snails. Neurons expressing the gene also had the protein. However, unexpectedly, not all of the cells also expressed octopamine itself, This adds complexity both to understanding the octopaminergic system in brain of the snails as well as interpreting the findings from any one neuroanatomical marker: expression of the mRNA or protein does not necessarily mean the neurotransmitter is actually present in the neuron.

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Tweedie-Pitre, V., Reunova, Y., and Wyeth, R.C. 2026. In Situ Hybridization Chain Reaction and Immunohistochemical Labeling of the Octopamine Production Pathway in the Central Nervous System of Lymnaea stagnalis. Journal of Comparative Neurology 534(6): e70179. doi:10.1002/cne.70179.