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Doublesex Regulates the Connectivity of a Neural Circuit Controlling Drosophila Male Courtship Song
- Source :
- Developmental Cell. 37:533-544
- Publication Year :
- 2016
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2016.
-
Abstract
- It is unclear how regulatory genes establish neural circuits that compose sex-specific behaviors. The Drosophila melanogaster male courtship song provides a powerful model to study this problem. Courting males vibrate a wing to sing bouts of pulses and hums, called pulse and sine song, respectively. We report the discovery of male-specific thoracic interneurons-the TN1A neurons-that are required specifically for sine song. The TN1A neurons can drive the activity of a sex-non-specific wing motoneuron, hg1, which is also required for sine song. The male-specific connection between the TN1A neurons and the hg1 motoneuron is regulated by the sexual differentiation gene doublesex. We find that doublesex is required in the TN1A neurons during development to increase the density of the TN1A arbors that interact with dendrites of the hg1 motoneuron. Our findings demonstrate how a sexual differentiation gene can build a sex-specific circuit motif by modulating neuronal arborization.
- Subjects :
- Male
0301 basic medicine
animal structures
Nerve net
media_common.quotation_subject
Doublesex
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Courtship
03 medical and health sciences
medicine
Biological neural network
Animals
Drosophila Proteins
Molecular Biology
media_common
Motor Neurons
Wing
Sexual differentiation
biology
fungi
Dendrites
Cell Biology
Anatomy
biology.organism_classification
DNA-Binding Proteins
Drosophila melanogaster
030104 developmental biology
medicine.anatomical_structure
nervous system
behavior and behavior mechanisms
Female
Nerve Net
Vocalization, Animal
Neuroscience
Drosophila Protein
Developmental Biology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15345807
- Volume :
- 37
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Developmental Cell
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....a1e7356335759701550b8c00710ac8bc