CANADA: New research, published today in eLife, identified the neural circuit in the brain of the fruitfly (Drosophila melanogaster) that is responsible for detecting a taste pheromone, which controls the decision of male flies to mate with females.
In the natural world, sense of taste controls many behavioral decisions. For many animals, pheromones, which are chemical signals used for communication, influence the choice to mate. However, very little is known about how taste pheromones are processed in the brain.
The recent work by Joanne Yew, assistant researcher at the Pacific Biosciences Research Center (PBRC), a newly integrated research unit of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at the University of Hawai’i – Mānoa, and colleagues explicitly tracked this process – identifying the taste cells on the fruitfly’s legs which detect the pheromone, locating the neurons in the brain which respond to the pheromone, and mapping the connection between the two populations of cells.
The pheromone, named CH503, is produced by males, passed to females during mating, and stops other males from mating with the female – it is an anti-aphrodisiac for other males.
Many taste cells are found on the forelegs of flies, so Yew and colleagues used genetic manipulation to turn off activity in individual classes of these taste cells. They then tested whether males could still respond to the pheromone. Using this strategy, they were able to identify one class of taste receptors, called Gr68a, that is responsible for detecting the pheromone.
