The Mina & Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences and Leslie and Susan Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel.
HHMI Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn, VA, United States of America.
PLoS Genet. 2018 Apr 9;14(4):e1007328. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1007328. eCollection 2018 Apr.
Living in a social environment requires the ability to respond to specific social stimuli and to incorporate information obtained from prior interactions into future ones. One of the mechanisms that facilitates social interaction is pheromone-based communication. In Drosophila melanogaster, the male-specific pheromone cis-vaccenyl acetate (cVA) elicits different responses in male and female flies, and functions to modulate behavior in a context and experience-dependent manner. Although it is the most studied pheromone in flies, the mechanisms that determine the complexity of the response, its intensity and final output with respect to social context, sex and prior interaction, are still not well understood. Here we explored the functional link between social interaction and pheromone-based communication and discovered an odorant binding protein that links social interaction to sex specific changes in cVA related responses. Odorant binding protein 69a (Obp69a) is expressed in auxiliary cells and secreted into the olfactory sensilla. Its expression is inversely regulated in male and female flies by social interactions: cVA exposure reduces its levels in male flies and increases its levels in female flies. Increasing or decreasing Obp69a levels by genetic means establishes a functional link between Obp69a levels and the extent of male aggression and female receptivity. We show that activation of cVA-sensing neurons is sufficeint to regulate Obp69a levels in the absence of cVA, and requires active neurotransmission between the sensory neuron to the second order olfactory neuron. The cross-talk between sensory neurons and non-neuronal auxiliary cells at the olfactory sensilla, represents an additional component in the machinery that promotes behavioral plasticity to the same sensory stimuli in male and female flies.
生活在社会环境中需要能够对特定的社会刺激做出反应，并将从先前的互动中获得的信息纳入未来的互动中。促进社会互动的机制之一是信息素为基础的通讯。在黑腹果蝇中，雄性特有的信息素顺-十一碳烯乙酸酯（cVA）在雄性和雌性果蝇中引起不同的反应，并以依赖于情境和经验的方式调节行为。尽管它是研究最多的果蝇信息素，但决定反应复杂性、其强度以及相对于社会背景、性别和先前互动的最终输出的机制仍未得到很好的理解。在这里，我们探讨了社会互动和信息素通讯之间的功能联系，并发现了一种气味结合蛋白，它将社会互动与 cVA 相关反应的性别特异性变化联系起来。气味结合蛋白 69a（Obp69a）在辅助细胞中表达，并分泌到嗅觉感受器中。它的表达在雄性和雌性果蝇中通过社会互动被反向调节：cVA 暴露降低了雄性果蝇中的表达水平，而增加了雌性果蝇中的表达水平。通过遗传手段增加或减少 Obp69a 的水平，在 Obp69a 水平和雄性攻击性和雌性接受性的程度之间建立了功能联系。我们表明，cVA 感觉神经元的激活足以在没有 cVA 的情况下调节 Obp69a 的水平，并且需要感觉神经元到第二级嗅觉神经元之间的活跃神经传递。感觉神经元和非神经元辅助细胞之间的串扰，代表了促进雄性和雌性果蝇对相同感觉刺激的行为可塑性的机制中的另一个组成部分。
