The D1 family dopamine receptor, DopR, potentiates hind leg grooming behavior in Drosophila

Abstract

Drosophila groom away debris and pathogens from the body using their legs in a stereotyped sequence of innate motor behaviors. Here, we investigated one aspect of the grooming repertoire by characterizing the D1 family dopamine receptor, DopR. Removal of DopR results in decreased hind leg grooming, as substantiated by quantitation of dye remaining on mutant and RNAi animals vs. controls and direct scoring of behavioral events. These data are also supported by pharmacological results that D1 receptor agonists fail to potentiate grooming behaviors in headless DopR flies. DopR protein is broadly expressed in the neuropil of the thoracic ganglion and overlaps with TH‐positive dopaminergic neurons. Broad neuronal expression of dopamine receptor in mutant animals restored normal grooming behaviors. These data provide evidence for the role of DopR in potentiating hind leg grooming behaviors in the thoracic ganglion of adult Drosophila. This is a remarkable juxtaposition to the considerable role of D1 family dopamine receptors in rodent grooming, and future investigations of evolutionary relationships of circuitry may be warranted.

Pharmacochaperoning in a Drosophila model system rescues human dopamine transporter variants associated with infantile/juvenile parkinsonism

“…Dopamine receptor activation elicits grooming in flies ( 28 – 30 ). Grooming is reduced in fumin flies; in addition, when introduced into a novel environment, fumin flies display substantially reduced head grooming in the first 5 min ( 31 ).…”

Fly Stampede 2.0: A Next Generation Optomotor Assay for Walking Behavior in Drosophila Melanogaster

“…Future experiments will therefore expand our initial analysis by mapping the DopR requirement in the brain using the DopR f02676 allele, which contains a UAS element for restoration of DopR function when crossed to Gal4 lines (Lebestky et al, 2009; Kong et al, 2010; Pitmon et al, 2016), as well as parallel loss of function experiments utilizing the UAS-DopR-RNAi reagent to isolate the DopR function in discrete circuits of the adult Drosophila brain (Keleman et al, 2012). …”

“…The dominant hypomorphic mutant allele DopR f02676 contains a piggy-Bac element insertion with a UAS sequence in the first intron (Exelixis Collection at Harvard medical School). The DopR f02676 allele was backcrossed into the CS wild-type background for six generations (Pitmon et al, 2016). Fly stocks were maintained at 18°C, and crosses were grown at 25°C.…”

Anti-instinctive Learning Behavior Revealed by Locomotion-Triggered Mild Heat Stress in Drosophila

“…All 4 types of receptors are expressed in the mushroom bodies (Deng et al, 2019). Previous studies showed that Dop1R1 is involved in aversive and appetitive olfactory learning, arousal level regulation, innate and startle-induced motor control, and temperature preference behaviors (Kim et al, 2007;Han et al, 2008;Lebestky et al, 2009;Kong et al, 2010;Bang et al, 2011;Pitmon et al, 2016;Sun et al, 2018). Dop1R2 plays a role in olfactory memory formation and courtship drive (Berry et al, 2012;Zhang et al, 2016).…”