The neuropeptide F/nitric oxide pathway is essential for shaping locomotor plasticity underlying locust phase transition
- Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
- Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Abstract
Behavioral plasticity is widespread in swarming animals, however little is known about its underlying neural and molecular mechanisms. Here, we report that a neuropeptide F (NPF)/nitric oxide (NO) pathway plays a critical role in the locomotor plasticity of swarming migratory locusts. Two related neuropeptides, NPF1a and NPF2, show reduced levels of their encoding transcripts during crowding, and the transcript levels of their receptors significantly increase during locust isolation. Both of these NPFs have suppressive effects on phase-related locomotor activity. A key downstream mediator for both NPFs is nitric oxide synthase (NOS) which regulates phase-related locomotor activity by controlling NO synthesis in the locust brain. Mechanistically, NPF1a and NPF2 modify NOS activity by separately suppressing its phosphorylation and lowering its transcript level, effects that are mediated by their respective receptors. Our results uncover a hierarchical neurochemical mechanism underlying behavioral plasticity in the swarming locust and provide insights into the NPF/NO axis.
Data availability
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Locusta migratoria transcriptomePublicly available at the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (accession no: SRP092214).
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Chinese Academy of Sciences (Strategic Priority Research Program (Grant NO. XDB11010000))
- Xianhui Wang
- Le Kang
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Youth fund (Grant NO. 31601875))
- Li Hou
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2017, Hou et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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The neuropeptide F/nitric oxide pathway is essential for shaping locomotor plasticity underlying locust phase transition
eLife 6:e22526.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.22526
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