Unveiling the secrets to her heart

Abstract

Before consenting to copulate, a female fruit fly gauges both her mating status and her suitor's quality. Three recent studies, Bussell et al. (2014) in Current Biology and Feng et al. (2014) and Zhou et al. (2014) in this issue of Neuron, dissected the receptivity circuit of female Drosophila, providing insights into how she integrates courtship cues, assesses her internal state, and directs the motor programs that facilitate copulation.

Fig 1. Common strategies for tagging neurons for manipulation in Drosphila

A. GAL80, an inhibitor of GAL4, can be used to subtract expression of GAL4. B. GAL4can be split intotwo non-functional parts (DBD and AD) and reconstituted. C. A removable GAL80 can restrict GAL4 to a random subset of its original pattern. D. LEXA/LEXAop provides independent expression control from GAL4/UAS. E. LEXA and GAL4 can be used to intersect, too.

Fig 2. Model of receptivity circuit based on the previewed works_[MZ2]

In mature virgins, the SPSNs and SAGs are active, allowing courtship cues processed by pC1 and pCdto activate receptivity motor programs. In mated females, SP shuts down SPSNs and SAGs, causing courtship cues to trigger rejection instead. The locus where SAGs access the core receptivity circuit is unknown.