Select interneuron clusters determine female sexual receptivity in Drosophila

Akira Sakurai, Masayuki Koganezawa, Kei-ichiro Yasunaga, Kazuo Emoto and Daisuke Yamamoto ()
Additional contact information
Akira Sakurai: Tohoku University Graduate School of Life Sciences
Masayuki Koganezawa: Tohoku University Graduate School of Life Sciences
Kei-ichiro Yasunaga: Osaka Bioscience Institute
Kazuo Emoto: Osaka Bioscience Institute
Daisuke Yamamoto: Tohoku University Graduate School of Life Sciences

Nature Communications, 2013, vol. 4, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Female Drosophila with the spinster mutation repel courting males and rarely mate. Here we show that the non-copulating phenotype can be recapitulated by the elimination of spinster functions from either spin-A or spin-D neuronal clusters, in the otherwise wild-type (spinster heterozygous) female brain. Spin-D corresponds to the olfactory projection neurons with dendrites in the antennal lobe VA1v glomerulus that is fruitless-positive, sexually dimorphic and responsive to fly odour. Spin-A is a novel local neuron cluster in the suboesophageal ganglion, which is known to process contact chemical pheromone information and copulation-related signals. A slight reduction in spinster expression to a level with a minimal effect is sufficient to shut off female sexual receptivity if the dominant-negative mechanistic target of rapamycin is simultaneously expressed, although the latter manipulation alone has only a marginal effect. We propose that spin-mediated mechanistic target of rapamycin signal transduction in these neurons is essential for females to accept the courting male.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2837 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:4:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms2837

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2837

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().