For an animal to survive in a constantly changing environment, its behavior must be shaped by the complex milieu of sensory stimuli it detects, its previous experience and its internal state. Although taste behaviors in the fly are relatively simple, with sugars eliciting acceptance behavior and bitter compounds avoidance, these behaviors are also plastic and modified by intrinsic and extrinsic cues such as hunger and sensory stimuli. Here, we show that dopamine modulates a simple taste behavior, proboscis extension to sucrose. Conditional silencing of dopaminergic neurons reduces proboscis extension probability and increased activation of dopaminergic neurons increases extension to sucrose but not to bitter compounds or water. One dopaminergic neuron with extensive branching in the primary taste relay, the subesophageal ganglion, triggers proboscis extension and its activity is altered by satiety state. These studies demonstrate the marked specificity of dopamine signaling and provide a foundation to examine neural mechanisms of feeding modulation in the fly.

Hunger and thirst are ancient homeostatic drives for food and water consumption. Although molecular and neural mechanisms underlying these drives are currently being uncovered, less is known about how hunger and thirst interact. Here, we use molecular genetic, behavioral, and anatomical studies in Drosophila to identify four neurons that modulate food and water consumption. Activation of these neurons promotes sugar consumption and restricts water consumption, whereas inactivation promotes water consumption and restricts sugar consumption. By calcium imaging studies, we show that these neurons are directly regulated by a hormone signal of nutrient levels and by osmolality. Finally, we identify a hormone receptor and an osmolality-sensitive ion channel that underlie this regulation. Thus, a small population of neurons senses internal signals of nutrient and water availability to balance sugar and water consumption. Our results suggest an elegant mechanism by which interoceptive neurons oppositely regulate homeostatic drives to eat and drink.

Nutrient deprivation can lead to dramatic changes in feeding behavior, including acceptance of foods that are normally rejected. In flies, this behavioral shift depends in part on reciprocal sensitization and desensitization of sweet and bitter taste, respectively. However, the mechanisms for bitter taste modulation remain unclear. Here, we identify a set of octopaminergic/tyraminergic neurons, named OA-VLs, that directly modulate bitter sensory neuron output in response to starvation. OA-VLs are in close proximity to bitter sensory neuron axon terminals and show reduced tonic firing following starvation. We find that octopamine and tyramine potentiate bitter sensory neuron responses, suggesting that starvation-induced reduction in OA-VL activity depotentiates bitter taste. Consistent with this model, artificial silencing of OA-VL activity induces a starvation-like reduction in bitter sensory neuron output. These results demonstrate that OA-VLs mediate a critical step in starvation-dependent bitter taste modulation, allowing flies to dynamically balance the risks associated with bitter food consumption against the threat of severe starvation.

Odorants and pheromones as well as sweet-and bitter-tasting small molecules are perceived through activation of G proteincoupled chemosensory receptors. In contrast, gustatory detection of salty and sour tastes may involve direct gating of sodium channels of the DEG͞ENaC family by sodium and hydrogen ions, respectively. We have found that ppk25, a Drosophila melanogaster gene encoding a DEG͞ENaC channel subunit, is expressed at highest levels in the male appendages responsible for gustatory and olfactory detection of female pheromones: the legs, wings, and antennae. Mutations in the ppk25 gene reduce or even abolish male courtship response to females in the dark, conditions under which detection of female pheromones is an essential courtshipactivating sensory input. In contrast, the same mutations have no effect on other behaviors tested. Importantly, ppk25 mutant males that show no response to females in the dark execute all of the normal steps of courtship behavior in the presence of visible light, suggesting that ppk25 is required for activation of courtship behavior by chemosensory perception of female pheromones. Finally, a ppk25 mutant allele predicted to encode a truncated protein has dominant-negative properties, suggesting that the normal Ppk25 protein acts as part of a multiprotein complex. Together, these results indicate that ppk25 is necessary for response to female pheromones by D. melanogaster males, and suggest that members of the DEG͞ENaC family of genes play a wider role in chemical senses than previously suspected.courtship ͉ behavior ͉ olfaction ͉ taste A s in most other animals, pheromones play key roles in the regulation of sexual behaviors of Drosophila melanogaster (1-3). In particular, several pheromones modulate male courtship of the female, which involves a stereotyped series of behaviors. By analogy with olfactory and gustatory perception of organic molecules in both insects and vertebrates (4), perception of these pheromones most likely involves interactions with seven-transmembrane receptors and subsequent activation of a G protein-coupled signal transduction pathway. Indeed, a male-specific member of the seven-transmembrane gustatory receptor family has been identified as a putative receptor for female courtship-stimulating pheromones (5). In contrast, gustatory perception of hydrogen and sodium ions, perceived as sour and salty tastes, respectively, has been suggested to involve direct gating of sodium channels of the DEG͞ENaC family (6, 7). In support of this possibility, inactivation of ppk11 or ppk19, two Drosophila DEG͞ENaC subunit genes, results in loss of behavioral and electrophysiological responses to salt (8). Here we report the unexpected finding that another Drosophila DEG͞ENaC subunit gene, ppk25, is specifically required for male response to courtshipactivating female pheromones. This observation suggests that members of this protein family play more diverse roles in chemical senses than previously suspected. Experimental ProceduresMutant and Transgenic Flies. Deletio...

The sense of taste is critical in determining the nutritional suitability of foods. Sweet and bitter are primary taste modalities in mammals, and their behavioral relevance is similar in flies. Sweet taste drives the appetitive response to energy sources, whereas bitter taste drives avoidance of potential toxins and also suppresses the sweet response [1, 2]. Despite their importance to survival, little is known about the neural circuit mechanisms underlying integration of sweet and bitter taste. Here, we describe a presynaptic gain control mechanism in Drosophila that differentially affects sweet and bitter taste channels and mediates integration of these opposing stimuli. Gain control is known to play an important role in fly olfaction, where GABAB receptor (GABABR) mediates intra- and interglomerular presynaptic inhibition of sensory neuron output [3-5]. In the taste system, we find that gustatory receptor neurons (GRNs) responding to sweet compounds express GABABR, whereas those that respond to bitter do not. GABABR mediates presynaptic inhibition of calcium responses in sweet GRNs, and both sweet and bitter stimuli evoke GABAergic neuron activity in the vicinity of GRN axon terminals. Pharmacological blockade and genetic reduction of GABABR both lead to increased sugar responses and decreased suppression of the sweet response by bitter compounds. We propose a model in which GABA acts via GABABR to expand the dynamic range of sweet GRNs through presynaptic gain control and suppress the output of sweet GRNs in the presence of opposing bitter stimuli.