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Suppression of male courtship by a Drosophila pheromone receptor

Nature Neuroscience volume 11, pages 874–876 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

In male Drosophila, chemosensory cues control many aspects of social behavior. We found that males with a mutated Gustatory receptor 32a gene (Gr32a) show high courtship toward males and mated females, indicating that GR32a functions as a pheromone receptor for a male inhibitory pheromone. Notably, we discovered that tarsal Gr32a-expressing neurons were essential for courtship suppression and projected to the ventrolateral protocerebrum, implying direct communication of chemosensory neurons with a higher-order brain structure.

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Figure 1: Knockout of the Gr32a gene and courtship analysis of mutant males.
Figure 2: Gr32a mutant male shows high courtship activity toward males.
Figure 3: Expression of Gr32a in tarsal neurons and their role in male-male courtship suppression.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank J. Daniels for assistance with behavioral experiments and H. Matsunami for comments on the manuscript. We acknowledge N. Thorne for initially making the observation that Gr32a neurons project beyond the SOG. We also would like to thank L. Vosshall for providing fly strains. This work was supported by grants from the US National Institutes of Health (01DC005606 and 01DC009014) to H.A. T.M. was supported by a long-term fellowship of the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, 27710, North Carolina, USA

    Tetsuya Miyamoto & Hubert Amrein

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  1. Tetsuya Miyamoto
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  2. Hubert Amrein
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Contributions

T.M. and H.A. conceived the experiments. T.M. conducted all of the experiments. T.M. and H.A. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hubert Amrein.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Figures 1–3, Tables 1–4 and Methods (PDF 2621 kb)

Supplementary Video 1

Movie of a mating competition experiment. (MPG 2348 kb)

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Miyamoto, T., Amrein, H. Suppression of male courtship by a Drosophila pheromone receptor. Nat Neurosci 11, 874–876 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2161

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