Dopamine Signalling in Mushroom Bodies Regulates Temperature-Preference Behaviour in Drosophila

By Sunhoe Bang, Seogang Hyun, Sung-Tae Hong, Jongkyun Kang, Kyunghwa Jeong, Joong-Jean Park, J. Choe, Jongkyeong Chung. 2011

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The ability to respond to environmental temperature variation is essential for survival in animals. Flies show robust temperature-preference behaviour (TPB) to find optimal temperatures. Recently, we have shown that Drosophila mushroom body (MB) functions as a center controlling TPB. However, neuromodulators that control the TPB in MB remain unknown. To identify the functions of dopamine in TPB, we have conducted various genetic studies in Drosophila. Inhibition of dopamine biosynthesis by genetic mutations or treatment with chemical inhibitors caused flies to prefer temperatures colder than normal. We also found that dopaminergic neurons are involved in TPB regulation, as the targeted inactivation of dopaminergic neurons by expression of a potassium channel (Kir2.1) induced flies with the loss of cold avoidance. Consistently, the mutant flies for dopamine receptor gene (DopR) also showed a cold temperature preference, which was rescued by MB–specific expression of DopR. Based on these results, we concluded that dopamine in MB is a key component in the homeostatic temperature control of Drosophila. The current findings will provide important bases to understand the logic of thermosensation and temperature preference decision in Drosophila.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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Citations in the corpus

Mushroom body output neurons encode valence and guide memory-based action selection in Drosophila (2014, background): “MBONs that influence approach to, or avoidance of, a learned stimulus may also have roles in innate preference behaviors for temperature and hunger-dependent CO2 avoidance (Hong et al., 2008; Bang et al., 2011; Bracker et al., 2013).”
Dopaminergic neurons encode a distributed, asymmetric representation of temperature in Drosophila (2013, methodology): “DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3933-12.2013 Copyright © 2013 the authors 0270-6474/13/322166-11$15.00/0 mushroom body, which have been implicated in both olfactory learning (Waddell, 2010) and temperature-preference behavior (Bang et al., 2011).”
A Higher Brain Circuit for Immediate Integration of Conflicting Sensory Information in Drosophila. (2015, background): “Different temperatures could activate distinct sets of dopaminergic neurons, which in turn lead to preference or avoidance of a particular temperature in a gradient [36, 37].”
Converging circuits mediate temperature and shock aversive olfactory conditioning in Drosophila. (2014, unknown): “Interestingly, flies avoid colder environments as well, and cold avoidance depends on intact dopamine neurons [23, 33].”
Three Dopamine Pathways Induce Aversive Odor Memories with Different Stability (2012, background): “ory, some of which are mapped in the MB [17,21,24,26,27,28,29].”