Project Details
Projekt
Sex-specific differences in the variability of Dorsal Cluster Neuron branching lead to sexually dimorphic wiring asymmetry and behavior
Applicant
Dr. Gerit Linneweber, Ph.D.
Subject Area
Developmental Neurobiology
Experimental and Theoretical Network Neuroscience
Experimental and Theoretical Network Neuroscience
Term
since 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 453877723
In sexually dimorphic animals, males and females display qualitative differences inbehavior, usually related to courtship and reproduction. Additionally, males and females exhibit quantitative differences for behaviors shared by both sexes. For example, both male and female Drosophila exhibit visual fixation behavior in Buridan's paradigm, but female behavior is on average more 'exploratory' while male behavior is on average more 'fixated'. My recent work has shown that increasing asymmetry of axonal projections of contralaterally projecting interneurons, the Dorsal Cluster Neurons (DCNs), leads to increased visual fixation behavior. In preliminary work for RobustCircuit, I have shown that there is indeed a higher asymmetry of DCN axonal projections in males compared to females. Since the development of DCN projection patterns includes intrinsically stochastic, non-heritable processes, these preliminary observations give rise to a surprising hypothesis: Male DCN wiring asymmetry (and consequently increased visual fixation behavior) are the consequence of a male-specific increase in the variability of developmental processes determining DCN branching patterns. An increase of DCN branching variability on the left and right side of the brain causes a rise of the average asymmetryand leads to sex-specific distributions of individually probabilistic behaviors. I hypothesize thatmale and female populations consist of individuals with a wide range of randomly unique, nonheritablebehavior, while on average, genetic determinants in males shift the distribution averageto more fixated visual orientation behavior. P8 will interrogate the sex-specific mechanismsunderlying this distribution shift. When this work is concluded, I will have tested how the robustdevelopment of sexually dimorphic behavioral distributions is achieved through a geneticallyencoded increase in branching variability in males compared to females.
DFG Programme
Research Units
