The narrowing of dendrite branches across nodes follows a well-defined scaling law

Significance To study the systematic variation of dendrite diameters, we established a superresolution method that allows us to resolve diameters in Drosophila class IV dendritic arborization neurons, model cell for studying branching morphogenesis. Interestingly, do not follow any known scaling laws. We propose different law follows from two concepts: Terminal branches have smallest whose average is about 230 nm, and there an incremental increase cross-sectional area needed support each additional terminal branch. The consistent with growing tips making primary metabolic demand, which supplied by microtubule-based transport. If generalizes other it may facilitate segmentation connectomic studies.