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 language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1429-1440 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Neuroscience Bulletin |
Volume | 36 |
Issue number | 12 |
Early online date | 11 Nov 2020 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 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.
Funders | Funder number |
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Jiangsu Innovation and Entrepreneurship Team Program | |
National Key R&D Program of China | |
National Natural Science Foundation of China | 31622028, 31970943, 31700920 |
National Key Research and Development Program of China | 2019YFA0802400 |
Program for Jiangsu Excellent Scientific and Technological Innovation Team |
Keywords
- Acetylcholine
- Drosophila
- GABA
- NPF
- Reproduction
- Survival