Inhibitory muscarinic acetylcholine receptors enhance aversive olfactory learning in adult Drosophila
- Tel Aviv University, Israel
- University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
- University of Leipzig, Germany
Abstract
Olfactory associative learning in Drosophila is mediated by synaptic plasticity between the Kenyon cells of the mushroom body and their output neurons. Both Kenyon cells and their inputs from projection neurons are cholinergic, yet little is known about the physiological function of muscarinic acetylcholine receptors in learning in adult flies. Here we show that aversive olfactory learning in adult flies requires type A muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAChR-A), particularly in the gamma subtype of Kenyon cells. mAChR-A inhibits odor responses and is localized in Kenyon cell dendrites. Moreover, mAChR-A knockdown impairs the learning-associated depression of odor responses in a mushroom body output neuron. Our results suggest that mAChR-A function in Kenyon cell dendrites is required for synaptic plasticity between Kenyon cells and their output neurons.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data files have been provided for Figures 1-8 and Figures S1, S8.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
European Commission (676844)
- Moshe Parnas
European Commission (639489)
- Andrew C Lin
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2019, Bielopolski 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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Inhibitory muscarinic acetylcholine receptors enhance aversive olfactory learning in adult Drosophila
eLife 8:e48264.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.48264
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