TY - JOUR TI - Drosophila mechanical nociceptors preferentially sense localized poking AU - Liu, Zhen AU - Wu, Meng-Hua AU - Wang, Qi-Xuan AU - Lin, Shao-Zhen AU - Feng, Xi-Qiao AU - Li, Bo AU - Liang, Xin A2 - Louis, Matthieu A2 - Desplan, Claude A2 - Göpfert, Martin VL - 11 PY - 2022 DA - 2022/10/06 SP - e76574 C1 - eLife 2022;11:e76574 DO - 10.7554/eLife.76574 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.76574 AB - Mechanical nociception is an evolutionarily conserved sensory process required for the survival of living organisms. Previous studies have revealed much about the neural circuits and sensory molecules in mechanical nociception, but the cellular mechanisms adopted by nociceptors in force detection remain elusive. To address this issue, we study the mechanosensation of a fly larval nociceptor (class IV da neurons, c4da) using a customized mechanical device. We find that c4da are sensitive to mN-scale forces and make uniform responses to the forces applied at different dendritic regions. Moreover, c4da showed a greater sensitivity to localized forces, consistent with them being able to detect the poking of sharp objects, such as wasp ovipositor. Further analysis reveals that high morphological complexity, mechanosensitivity to lateral tension and possibly also active signal propagation in dendrites contribute to the sensory features of c4da. In particular, we discover that Piezo and Ppk1/Ppk26, two key mechanosensory molecules, make differential but additive contributions to the mechanosensitivity of c4da. In all, our results provide updates into understanding how c4da process mechanical signals at the cellular level and reveal the contributions of key molecules. KW - nociception KW - mechanosensation KW - dendritic morphology KW - Ppk1/Ppk26 KW - piezo KW - Ca-α1D JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -