fruitless tunes functional flexibility of courtship circuitry during development
- Southeast University, China
Abstract
Drosophila male courtship is controlled by the male-specific products of the fruitless (fruM) gene and its expressing neuronal circuitry. fruM is considered a master gene that controls all aspects of male courtship. By temporally and spatially manipulating fruM expression, we found that fruM is required during a critical developmental period for innate courtship towards females, while its function during adulthood is involved in inhibiting male-male courtship. By altering or eliminating fruM expression, we generated males that are innately heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or without innate courtship but could acquire such behavior in an experience-dependent manner. These findings show that fruM is not absolutely necessary for courtship but is critical during development to build a sex circuitry with reduced flexibility and enhanced efficiency, and provide a new view about how fruM tunes functional flexibility of a sex circuitry instead of switching on its function as conventionally viewed.
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, 2, 3, Figure 3-figure supplement 1, 2 and 4.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (31970943,31622028)
- Yufeng Pan
National Natural Science Foundation of China (31700905)
- Qionglin Peng
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2021, Chen 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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fruitless tunes functional flexibility of courtship circuitry during development
eLife 10:e59224.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.59224
