Investigation of Drosophila fruitless neurons that express Dpr/DIP cell adhesion molecules

Abstract

Drosophila reproductive behaviors are directed by fruitless neurons. A reanalysis of genomic studies shows that genes encoding dpr and DIP Immunoglobulin superfamily (IgSF) members are expressed in fru P1 neurons. We find that each fru P1 and dpr/DIP (fru P1 ∩ dpr/DIP) overlapping expression pattern is similar in both sexes, but there are dimorphisms in neuronal morphology and cell number. Behavioral studies of fru P1 ∩ dpr/DIP perturbation genotypes indicates that the mushroom body functions together with the lateral protocerebral complex to direct courtship behavior. A single-cell RNA-seq analysis of fru P1 neurons shows that many DIPs have high expression in a small set of neurons, whereas the dprs are often expressed in a larger set of neurons at intermediate levels, with a myriad of dpr/DIP expression combinations. Functionally, we find that perturbations of sex hierarchy genes and of DIP-ε change the sex-specific morphologies of fru P1 ∩ DIP-α neurons.

Analysis of cell-type-specific chromatin modifications and gene expression in Drosophila neurons that direct reproductive behavior

“…Genes in this family encode cell surface proteins that are involved in cell adhesion [ 60 , 61 ]. This is consistent with our recent study that showed an interacting subfamily of immunoglobulin-fold domain encoding genes, dpr s and DIP s, are expressed in adult fru P1 neurons [ 62 ]. The observation that immunoglobulin-like domain superfamily encoding genes are in a poised gene expression state may suggest a role in mediating neuronal plasticity in adult fru P1 neurons.…”

“…For each Venn diagram category, the number of genes, and the proportion of the total genes (in proteins/cell adhesion molecules (IgSFs), as we previously reported for 1-day adults [42]. We have also validated that the Dpr/DIP IgSFs, a subset of these cell adhesion molecules, play a role in fru P1 neurons, further validating the data sets presented here [62].…”

Single-cell transcriptome profiles of Drosophila fruitless-expressing neurons from both sexes

“…Previous studies have shown that the IgSFs are regulated by Fru M and/or have enriched expression in fru P1 neurons (Brovkina et al ., 2021; Dalton et al ., 2013; Goldman and Arbeitman, 2007; Neville et al ., 2014; Newell et al ., 2016; Palmateer et al ., 2021; Vernes, 2014). Additionally, our analysis of adult dpr / DIP -expressing neurons that also express fru P1 ( DIP ∩ fru P1 ), showed that DIP-alpha ∩ fru P1 and DIP-delta ∩ fru P1 neurons have region-specific dimorphism in CNS neuron number and projection pattern (Brovero et al, 2021).…”

Systematic expression profiling of dprs and DIPs reveals cell surface codes in Drosophila larval peripheral neurons

“…Furthermore, Dprs and DIPs are widely expressed across many neural circuits. Several labs have utilized the GAL4/UAS system to visualize expression of dprs and DIPs in olfactory neurons (Barish et al, 2018), adult leg MNs and SNs (Venkatasubramanian et al, 2019), optic lobe neurons (Cosmanescu et al, 2018), and fru P1 neurons (Brovero et al, 2021). While these studies revealed unique dpr/DIP expression in the respective neurons, the depth of the expression map was limited due to the less complete GAL4 collection at the time, and some studies only focused on a global expression pattern without characterization of individual cell types.…”

“…When examining available dpr/DIP-GAL4 lines to confirm the GAL4 insertion sites and the version of GAL4 used, we found that the original dpr13-GAL4 no longer contained the GAL4 sequence (Barish et al, 2018;Brovero et al, 2021). Here, we generated new dpr13-GAL4 and dpr8-GAL4 from respective MiMIC insertion lines using Trojan exons (Diao et al, 2015).…”