Drosophila gustatory projections are segregated by taste modality and connectivity
- University of California, Berkeley, United States
- University of California Berkeley, United States
- University of Vermont, United States
Abstract
Gustatory sensory neurons detect caloric and harmful compounds in potential food and convey this information to the brain to inform feeding decisions. To examine the signals that gustatory neurons transmit and receive, we reconstructed gustatory axons and their synaptic sites in the adult Drosophila melanogaster brain, utilizing a whole-brain electron microscopy volume. We reconstructed 87 gustatory projections from the proboscis labellum in the right hemisphere and 57 from the left, representing the majority of labellar gustatory axons. Gustatory neurons contain a nearly equal number of interspersed pre-and post-synaptic sites, with extensive synaptic connectivity among gustatory axons. Morphology- and connectivity-based clustering revealed six distinct groups, likely representing neurons recognizing different taste modalities. The vast majority of synaptic connections are between neurons of the same group. This study resolves the anatomy of labellar gustatory projections, reveals that gustatory projections are segregated based on taste modality, and uncovers synaptic connections that may alter the transmission of gustatory signals.
Data availability
FAFB neuronal reconstructions will be available from Virtual Fly Brain (https://fafb.catmaid.virtualflybrain.org/).
Article and author information
Author details
Gabriella R Sterne
Funding
National Institutes of Health (R01DC013280)
- Kristin Scott
National Institutes of Health (F32DK117671)
- Gabriella R Sterne
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2022, Engert 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
-
- 2,281
- views
-
- 529
- downloads
-
- 22
- 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)
Drosophila gustatory projections are segregated by taste modality and connectivity
eLife 11:e78110.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78110
Further reading
-
- Neuroscience
A dysfunctional signaling pathway in the hippocampus has been linked to chronic pain-related memory impairment in mice.
-
- Neuroscience
Locomotion is controlled by spinal circuits that interact with supraspinal drives and sensory feedback from the limbs. These sensorimotor interactions are disrupted following spinal cord injury. The thoracic lateral hemisection represents an experimental model of an incomplete spinal cord injury, where connections between the brain and spinal cord are abolished on one side of the cord. To investigate the effects of such an injury on the operation of the spinal locomotor network, we used our computational model of cat locomotion recently published in eLife (Rybak et al., 2024) to investigate and predict changes in cycle and phase durations following a thoracic lateral hemisection during treadmill locomotion in tied-belt (equal left-right speeds) and split-belt (unequal left-right speeds) conditions. In our simulations, the ‘hemisection’ was always applied to the right side. Based on our model, we hypothesized that following hemisection the contralesional (‘intact’, left) side of the spinal network is mostly controlled by supraspinal drives, whereas the ipsilesional (‘hemisected’, right) side is mostly controlled by somatosensory feedback. We then compared the simulated results with those obtained during experiments in adult cats before and after a mid-thoracic lateral hemisection on the right side in the same locomotor conditions. Our experimental results confirmed many effects of hemisection on cat locomotion predicted by our simulations. We show that having the ipsilesional hindlimb step on the slow belt, but not the fast belt, during split-belt locomotion substantially reduces the effects of lateral hemisection. The model provides explanations for changes in temporal characteristics of hindlimb locomotion following hemisection based on altered interactions between spinal circuits, supraspinal drives, and somatosensory feedback.
