A locomotor neural circuit persists and functions similarly in larvae and adult Drosophila

  1. Kristen Lee
  2. Chris Q Doe  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of Oregon, United States
  2. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Oregon, United States

Abstract

Individual neurons can undergo drastic structural changes, known as neuronal remodeling or structural plasticity. One example of this is in response to hormones, such as during puberty in mammals or metamorphosis in insects. However, in each of these examples it remains unclear whether the remodeled neuron resumes prior patterns of connectivity, and if so, whether the persistent circuits drive similar behaviors. Here, we utilize a well-characterized neural circuit in the Drosophila larva: the Moonwalking Descending Neuron (MDN) circuit. We previously showed that larval MDN induces backward crawling, and synapses onto the Pair1 interneuron to inhibit forward crawling (Carreira-Rosario et al., 2018). MDN is remodeled during metamorphosis and regulates backward walking in the adult fly. We investigated whether Pair1 is remodeled during metamorphosis and functions within the MDN circuit during adulthood. We assayed morphology and molecular markers to demonstrate that Pair1 is remodeled during metamorphosis and persists in the adult fly. MDN-Pair1 connectivity is lost during early pupal stages, when both neurons are severely pruned back, but connectivity is re-established at mid-pupal stages and persist into the adult. In the adult, optogenetic activation of Pair1 resulted in arrest of forward locomotion, similar to what is observed in larvae. Thus, the MDN-Pair1 neurons are an interneuronal circuit - a pair of synaptically connected interneurons – that is re-established during metamorphosis, yet generates similar locomotor behavior at both larval and adult stages.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Kristen Lee

    Institute of Neuroscience, University of Oregon, Eugene, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  2. Chris Q Doe

    Institute of Neuroscience, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Oregon, Eugene, United States
    For correspondence
    cdoe@uoregon.edu
    Competing interests
    Chris Q Doe, Reviewing editor, eLife.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-5980-8029

Funding

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

  • Chris Q Doe

National Institutes of Health (HD27056)

  • Kristen Lee

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

Copyright

© 2021, Lee & Doe

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

  • 2,211
    views
  • 241
    downloads
  • 23
    citations

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

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. Kristen Lee
  2. Chris Q Doe
(2021)
A locomotor neural circuit persists and functions similarly in larvae and adult Drosophila
eLife 10:e69767.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.69767

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.69767

Further reading

    1. Neuroscience
    Sihan Yang, Anastasia Kiyonaga
    Insight

    A neural signature of serial dependence has been found, which mirrors the attractive bias of visual information seen in behavioral experiments.

    1. Developmental Biology
    2. Neuroscience
    Agnik Dasgupta, Caleb C Reagor ... AJ Hudspeth
    Research Article

    In a developing nervous system, axonal arbors often undergo complex rearrangements before neural circuits attain their final innervation topology. In the lateral line sensory system of the zebrafish, developing sensory axons reorganize their terminal arborization patterns to establish precise neural microcircuits around the mechanosensory hair cells. However, a quantitative understanding of the changes in the sensory arbor morphology and the regulators behind the microcircuit assembly remain enigmatic. Here, we report that Semaphorin7A (Sema7A) acts as an important mediator of these processes. Utilizing a semi-automated three-dimensional neurite tracing methodology and computational techniques, we have identified and quantitatively analyzed distinct topological features that shape the network in wild-type and Sema7A loss-of-function mutants. In contrast to those of wild-type animals, the sensory axons in Sema7A mutants display aberrant arborizations with disorganized network topology and diminished contacts to hair cells. Moreover, ectopic expression of a secreted form of Sema7A by non-hair cells induces chemotropic guidance of sensory axons. Our findings propose that Sema7A likely functions both as a juxtracrine and as a secreted cue to pattern neural circuitry during sensory organ development.