Publication Date:
2009-03-13
Description:
The neural substrates that the fruitfly Drosophila uses to sense smell, taste and light share marked structural and functional similarities with ours, providing attractive models to dissect sensory stimulus processing. Here we focus on two of the remaining and less understood prime sensory modalities: graviception and hearing. We show that the fly has implemented both sensory modalities into a single system, Johnston's organ, which houses specialized clusters of mechanosensory neurons, each of which monitors specific movements of the antenna. Gravity- and sound-sensitive neurons differ in their response characteristics, and only the latter express the candidate mechanotransducer channel NompC. The two neural subsets also differ in their central projections, feeding into neural pathways that are reminiscent of the vestibular and auditory pathways in our brain. By establishing the Drosophila counterparts of these sensory systems, our findings provide the basis for a systematic functional and molecular dissection of how different mechanosensory stimuli are detected and processed.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Kamikouchi, Azusa -- Inagaki, Hidehiko K -- Effertz, Thomas -- Hendrich, Oliver -- Fiala, Andre -- Gopfert, Martin C -- Ito, Kei -- England -- Nature. 2009 Mar 12;458(7235):165-71. doi: 10.1038/nature07810.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Sensory Systems Laboratory, Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne, 50923 Cologne, Germany.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19279630" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Calcium Signaling
;
Drosophila Proteins/genetics
;
Drosophila melanogaster/anatomy & histology/metabolism/*physiology
;
Gene Expression Regulation
;
Gravity Sensing/*physiology
;
Hearing/*physiology
;
Ion Channels/genetics
;
Sensory Receptor Cells/metabolism/*physiology
;
Signal Transduction
;
Transient Receptor Potential Channels
;
Vibration
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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