The doublesex gene regulates dimorphic sexual and aggressive behaviors in Drosophila

Abstract

Most animal species display dimorphic sexual behaviors and male-biased aggressiveness. Current models have focused on the male-specific product from the fruitless ( fru M ) gene, which controls male courtship and male-specific aggression patterns in fruit flies, and describe a male-specific mechanism underlying sexually dimorphic behaviors. Here we show that the doublesex ( dsx ) gene, which expresses male-specific Dsx M and female-specific Dsx F transcription factors, functions in the nervous system to control both male and female sexual and aggressive behaviors. We find that Dsx is not only required in central brain neurons for male and female sexual behaviors, but also functions in approximately eight pairs of male-specific neurons to promote male aggressiveness and approximately two pairs of female-specific neurons to inhibit female aggressiveness. Dsx F knockdown females fight more frequently, even with males. Our findings reveal crucial roles of dsx , which is broadly conserved from worms to humans, in a small number of neurons in both sexes to establish dimorphic sexual and aggressive behaviors.

Changes in the cellular makeup of motor patterning circuits drive courtship song evolution inDrosophila

“…TN1 neurons are one of the anatomically distinct dsx-expressing neuronal clusters 22,26 , allowing the quantification of TN1 cell number by probing dsx mRNA or protein. Both in situ hybridization chain reaction (HCR) 27,28 using dsx mRNA probes and immunostaining (IHC) using Dsx antibodies 29 confirmed the presence of a TN1 cluster in D. yakuba, but with ~10 fewer neurons than in D. melanogaster (Fig. 1c).…”

Molecular and neuronal mechanisms governing sexually dimorphic prioritization of innate behaviors

“…It has been found that female pC1 neurons could be divided into subtypes at the single-cell level[19], and different pC1 subtypes regulated sexual and aggressive behaviors, respectively[17, 19, 20]. We propose that distinct pC1 subsets may have different activation thresholds to hierarchically control multiple behaviors.…”

“…RNAi lines were from Tsinghua Fly Center (THFC) at the Tsinghua University. UAS-FRT-stop-FRT-dTrpA1 [34], UAS-FRT-stop-FRT-TNT in , UAS-FRT-stop-FRT-TNT [61], dsx GAL4 , dsx LexA and dsx DBD [20] were used as previously. The full genotypes of tested flies are described in Table S1.…”

Male-male interactions shape mate selection inDrosophila

“…The absence of aggression towards a wingless male parallels observations that P1a neuron activation selectively triggers courtship towards inanimate visual targets 38,[40][41][42] , highlighting the importance of sensory and behavioral feedback cues in shaping a male's ongoing actions. We therefore searched for additional circuit nodes sufficient to drive wing flicks, focusing on neurons marked by expression of the Doublesex transcription factor due to its role in specifying sexually-dimorphic patterns of aggression [72][73][74][75][76] . We identified a previously described intersectional genetic driver, pC1-SS2 14,77 , that labels four neurons within the central brain as a potential candidate (Figures 6E, S9A-C).…”