Publication Date:
2010-10-23
Description:
Appropriate preferences for light or dark conditions can be crucial for an animal's survival. Innate light preferences are not static in some animals, including the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, which prefers darkness in the feeding larval stage but prefers light in adulthood. To elucidate the neural circuit underlying light preference, we examined the neurons involved in larval phototactic behavior by regulating neuronal functions. Modulating activity of two pairs of isomorphic neurons in the central brain switched the larval light preference between photophobic and photophilic. These neurons were found to be immediately downstream of pdf-expressing lateral neurons, which are innervated by larval photoreceptors. Our results revealed a neural mechanism that could enable the adjustment of animals' response strategies to environmental stimuli according to biological needs.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Gong, Zhefeng -- Liu, Jiangqu -- Guo, Chao -- Zhou, Yanqiong -- Teng, Yan -- Liu, Li -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2010 Oct 22;330(6003):499-502. doi: 10.1126/science.1195993.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China. zfgong@moon.ibp.ac.cn〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20966250" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Behavior, Animal/*radiation effects
;
Brain/cytology/physiology
;
Drosophila melanogaster/cytology/growth & development/*radiation effects
;
Green Fluorescent Proteins
;
Larva/physiology/radiation effects
;
*Light
;
Neural Pathways
;
Neurons/*physiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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