Demir Ebru, Dickson Barry J
Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, A-1030 Vienna, Austria.
Cell. 2005 Jun 3;121(5):785-94. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2005.04.027.
All animals exhibit innate behaviors that are specified during their development. Drosophila melanogaster males (but not females) perform an elaborate and innate courtship ritual directed toward females (but not males). Male courtship requires products of the fruitless (fru) gene, which is spliced differently in males and females. We have generated alleles of fru that are constitutively spliced in either the male or the female mode. We show that male splicing is essential for male courtship behavior and sexual orientation. More importantly, male splicing is also sufficient to generate male behavior in otherwise normal females. These females direct their courtship toward other females (or males engineered to produce female pheromones). The splicing of a single neuronal gene thus specifies essentially all aspects of a complex innate behavior.
所有动物都会表现出在其发育过程中被确定的先天行为。黑腹果蝇的雄性（而非雌性）会对雌性（而非雄性）进行精心且先天的求偶仪式。雄性求偶需要无果（fru）基因的产物，该基因在雄性和雌性中的剪接方式不同。我们已经产生了在雄性或雌性模式下组成型剪接的fru等位基因。我们表明，雄性剪接对于雄性求偶行为和性取向至关重要。更重要的是，雄性剪接也足以在其他方面正常的雌性中产生雄性行为。这些雌性会将它们的求偶行为指向其他雌性（或经过改造以产生雌性信息素的雄性）。因此，单个神经元基因的剪接基本上决定了一种复杂先天行为的所有方面。
