Neurotransmitter Prediction from Electron Microscopy Images in BANC

This repository contains the neurotransmitter-prediction pipeline used in the BANC (Brain And Nerve Cord) connectome paper:

Bates AS, Phelps JS, Kim M, Yang HHJ, et al. (2026). Distributed control circuits across a brain-and-cord connectome. Nature (open access). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10735-w. Preprint: bioRxiv 2025.07.31.667571 (v3), https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.31.667571v3.

The classifier itself is based on previous work from the preprint Neurotransmitter Classification from Electron Microscopy Images at Synaptic Sites in Drosophila.

Access to Neurotransmitter Predictions

Predictions for the neurotransmitters (GABA, acetylcholine, glutamate, serotonin, octopamine, dopamine, histamine, and tyramine) on the BANC dataset are publicly available here:

Note: Only synapses detected with a size > 5 have NTs predicted.

gs://leelab_fly_cns/files/banc_nt_prediction_w_sizethresh_5_09072025.parquet

A simplied version of the neurotransmitter predictions for BANC on CAVE are located here: https://cave.fanc-fly.com/annotation/views/aligned_volume/brain_and_nerve_cord/table/synapses_250226_nt_prediction_5

Ground-Truth

The ground-truth train and test split used for BANC is located here:

gs://leelab_fly_cns/files/banc_nt_ground_truth

Citation

If you use these predictions in published work, please cite the BANC paper:

Bates AS, Phelps JS, Kim M, Yang HHJ, Matsliah A, Ajabi Z, Perlman E, et al. (2026). Distributed control circuits across a brain-and-cord connectome. Nature (open access). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10735-w Preprint: bioRxiv 2025.07.31.667571 (v3), https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.31.667571v3

@article{bates2026banc,
  title   = {Distributed control circuits across a brain-and-cord connectome},
  author  = {Bates, Alexander S. and Phelps, Jasper S. and Kim, Minsu and Yang, Helen H. and others},
  journal = {Nature},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.1038/s41586-026-10735-w},
  url     = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10735-w},
  note    = {Open access. Preprint v3: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.31.667571v3}
}

For the upstream Synister classifier itself, please additionally cite the original Synister preprint linked above.