Sex and Death: Identification of Feedback Neuromodulation Balancing Reproduction and Survival

Can Gao, Chao Guo, Qionglin Peng, Jie Cao, Galit Shohat-Ophir, Dong Liu, Yufeng Pan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

Some semelparous organisms in nature mate as many times as they can in a single reproductive episode before death, while most iteroparous species including humans avoid such suicidal reproductive behavior. Animals naturally pursue more sex and the possible fatal consequence of excessive sex must be orchestrated by negative feedback signals in iteroparous species, yet very little is known about the regulatory mechanisms. Here we used Drosophila male sexual behavior as a model system to study how excessive sex may kill males and how the nervous system reacts to prevent death by sex. We found that continuous sexual activity by activating the fruitless-expressing neurons induced a fixed multi-step behavioral pattern ending with male death. We further found negative feedback in the fly brain to prevent suicidal sexual behavior by expression changes of the neurotransmitters acetylcholine and gamma-aminobutyric acid, and neuropeptide F. These findings are crucial to understand the molecular underpinnings of how different organisms choose reproductive strategies and balance reproduction and survival.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1429-1440
Number of pages12
JournalNeuroscience Bulletin
Volume36
Issue number12
Early online date11 Nov 2020
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, CAS.

Funding

We thank the Tsinghua Fly Center and Bloomington Stock Center for the fly stocks. This work was supported by grants from the National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFA0802400), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31970943, 31622028, and 31700920), and the Jiangsu Innovation and Entrepreneurship Team Program. We thank the Tsinghua Fly Center and Bloomington Stock Center for the fly stocks. This work was supported by grants from the National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFA0802400), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31970943, 31622028, and 31700920), and the Jiangsu Innovation and Entrepreneurship Team Program.

FundersFunder number
Jiangsu Innovation and Entrepreneurship Team Program
National Key R&D Program of China
National Natural Science Foundation of China31622028, 31970943, 31700920
National Key Research and Development Program of China2019YFA0802400
Program for Jiangsu Excellent Scientific and Technological Innovation Team

    Keywords

    • Acetylcholine
    • Drosophila
    • GABA
    • NPF
    • Reproduction
    • Survival

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