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A more recent version of this article appeared on October 1, 2008
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Submitted on October 26, 2007
Revised on July 9, 2008
Accepted on July 18, 2008
*Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802; Institute for Cancer Research, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA 19111
Monitoring Editor: Yixian Zheng
In vertebrate neurons, axons have a uniform arrangement of microtubules with plus ends distal to the cell body (plus-end-out), and dendrites have equal numbers of plus- and minus-end-out microtubules. To determine whether microtubule orientation is a conserved feature of axons and dendrites, we analyzed microtubule orientation in invertebrate neurons. Using microtubule plus end dynamics, we mapped microtubule orientation in Drosophila sensory neurons, interneurons and motor neurons. As expected, all axonal microtubules have plus-end-out orientation. However, in proximal dendrites of all classes of neuron, 
90% of dendritic microtubules were oriented with minus ends distal to the cell body. This result suggests that minus-end-out, rather than mixed orientation, microtubules are the signature of the dendritic microtubule cytoskeleton. Surprisingly, our map of microtubule orientation predicts that there are no tracks for direct cargo transport between the cell body and dendrites in unipolar neurons. We confirm this prediction, and validate the completeness of our map, by imaging endosome movements in motor neurons. As predicted by our map, endosomes travel smoothly between the cell body and axon, but cannot move directly between the cell body and dendrites.
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