1. Neuroscience

Cell types and neuronal circuitry underlying female aggression in Drosophila

  1. Catherine E Schretter
  2. Yoshi Aso
  3. Alice A Robie
  4. Marisa Dreher
  5. Michael-John Dolan
  6. Nan Chen
  7. Masayoshi Ito
  8. Tansy Yang
  9. Ruchi Parekh
  10. Kristin M Branson
  11. Gerald M Rubin  Is a corresponding author
  1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, United States
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.58942
Share this article
Cite this article
  1. Catherine E Schretter
  2. Yoshi Aso
  3. Alice A Robie
  4. Marisa Dreher
  5. Michael-John Dolan
  6. Nan Chen
  7. Masayoshi Ito
  8. Tansy Yang
  9. Ruchi Parekh
  10. Kristin M Branson
  11. Gerald M Rubin
(2020)
Cell types and neuronal circuitry underlying female aggression in Drosophila
eLife 9:e58942.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.58942
  2. Download BibTeX
  3. Download .RIS

Abstract

Aggressive social interactions are used to compete for limited resources and are regulated by complex sensory cues and the organism's internal state. While both sexes exhibit aggression, its neuronal underpinnings are understudied in females. Here, we identify a population of sexually dimorphic aIPg neurons in the adult Drosophila melanogaster central brain whose optogenetic activation increased, and genetic inactivation reduced, female aggression. Analysis of GAL4 lines identified in an unbiased screen for increased female chasing behavior revealed the involvement of another sexually dimorphic neuron, pC1d, and implicated aIPg and pC1d neurons as core nodes regulating female aggression. Connectomic analysis demonstrated that aIPg neurons and pC1d are interconnected and suggest that aIPg neurons may exert part of their effect by gating the flow of visual information to descending neurons. Our work reveals important regulatory components of the neuronal circuitry that underlies female aggressive social interactions and provides tools for their manipulation.

Data availability

Data is included in the paper and the supplemental files. Source data have been provided for Figures 1,2, 4 and 9.

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Catherine E Schretter

    Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3957-6838

  2. Yoshi Aso

    Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2939-1688

  3. Alice A Robie

    Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  4. Marisa Dreher

    Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0041-9229

  5. Michael-John Dolan

    Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9666-3682

  6. Nan Chen

    Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  7. Masayoshi Ito

    Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  8. Tansy Yang

    Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1131-0410

  9. Ruchi Parekh

    Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-8060-2807

  10. Kristin M Branson

    Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  11. Gerald M Rubin

    Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, United States
    For correspondence
    rubing@janelia.hhmi.org
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8762-8703

Funding

Howard Hughes Medial Institute

  • Catherine E Schretter
  • Yoshi Aso
  • Alice A Robie
  • Marisa Dreher
  • Michael-John Dolan
  • Nan Chen
  • Masayoshi Ito
  • Tansy Yang
  • Ruchi Parekh
  • Kristin M Branson

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2020, Schretter 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.

Metrics

  • 5,940
    views
  • 702
    downloads
  • 102
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Citations by DOI

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Catherine E Schretter
  2. Yoshi Aso
  3. Alice A Robie
  4. Marisa Dreher
  5. Michael-John Dolan
  6. Nan Chen
  7. Masayoshi Ito
  8. Tansy Yang
  9. Ruchi Parekh
  10. Kristin M Branson
  11. Gerald M Rubin
(2020)
Cell types and neuronal circuitry underlying female aggression in Drosophila
eLife 9:e58942.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.58942

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.58942

Categories and tags

Research organism

Further reading

    1. Neuroscience

    The neural basis for a persistent internal state in Drosophila females

    David Deutsch, Diego Pacheco ... Mala Murthy
    Research Article Updated

    Sustained changes in mood or action require persistent changes in neural activity, but it has been difficult to identify the neural circuit mechanisms that underlie persistent activity and contribute to long-lasting changes in behavior. Here, we show that a subset of Doublesex+ pC1 neurons in the Drosophila female brain, called pC1d/e, can drive minutes-long changes in female behavior in the presence of males. Using automated reconstruction of a volume electron microscopic (EM) image of the female brain, we map all inputs and outputs to both pC1d and pC1e. This reveals strong recurrent connectivity between, in particular, pC1d/e neurons and a specific subset of Fruitless+ neurons called aIPg. We additionally find that pC1d/e activation drives long-lasting persistent neural activity in brain areas and cells overlapping with the pC1d/e neural network, including both Doublesex+ and Fruitless+ neurons. Our work thus links minutes-long persistent changes in behavior with persistent neural activity and recurrent circuit architecture in the female brain.