A locomotor neural circuit persists and functions similarly in larvae and adult Drosophila.

ABSTRACT: Individual neurons can undergo drastic structural changes, known as neuronal remodeling or structural plasticity. One example of this is in response to hormones, such as during puberty in mammals or metamorphosis in insects. However, in each of these examples, it remains unclear whether the remodeled neuron resumes prior patterns of connectivity, and if so, whether the persistent circuits drive similar behaviors. Here, we utilize a well-characterized neural circuit in the Drosophila larva: the moonwalker descending neuron (MDN) circuit. We previously showed that larval MDN induces backward crawling, and synapses onto the Pair1 interneuron to inhibit forward crawling (Carreira-Rosario et al., 2018). MDN is remodeled during metamorphosis and regulates backward walking in the adult fly

SUBMITTER: Lee K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8298091 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature