888B Poster - 14. Neural circuits and behavior
Friday April 08, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Authors:
Julia Diamandi ¹; Julia Duckhorn ¹; Jessica Cande ²; Troy Shirangi ¹

Affiliations:
1) Villanova University, Villanova, PA; 2) Cooley LLP, Boston, MA

Keywords:
g. courtship and mating; e. enhancers

In Drosophila, virgin females carrying mutations in the dissatisfaction gene (dsf) are delayed in mating with males and exhibit deficits in opening their vaginal plates during courtship. Dsf contributes to female behavior in part by functioning in a sexually dimorphic population of interneurons in the abdominal ganglion called the ddag neurons. The ddag neurons in females are composed of a variety of neuroanatomical subtypes, but which subtypes matter for female behavior is unknown. Here, we screened seven cis-regulatory fragments from the dsf gene for reporter expression in dsf-expressing neurons in the larval and adult central nervous system. We find that most of dsf’s expression in the central nervous system is driven by cis-regulatory sequences within dsf’s third intron. Using these fragments, we identified a subpopulation of local female-specific ddag interneurons that is sufficient for the opening of the vaginal plates in virgin females during courtship. The regulatory fragments targeting this subpopulation of neurons contain putative binding sites to proteins encoded by the sex determination gene, doublesex, suggesting that doublesex may directly regulate dsf expression in a subset of ddag neurons. Our results provide new insights into the neural circuits that mediate the opening of the vaginal plates and the mechanisms that regulate dsf expression in the central nervous system.