Feminizing cholinergic neurons in a male Drosophila nervous system enhances aggression

Previous studies in Drosophila have demonstrated that whether flies fight like males or females can be switched by selectively manipulating genes of the sex determination hierarchy in male and female nervous systems. Here we extend these studies by demonstrating that changing the sex of cholinergic neurons in male fruit fly nervous systems via expression of the transformer gene increases the levels of aggression shown by the flies without altering the way the flies fight. Transformer manipulation in this way does not change phototaxis, geotaxis, locomotion or odor avoidance of the mutant males compared to controls. Cholinergic neurons must be feminized via this route during the late larval/early pupal stages of development to show the enhanced aggression phenotype. Other investigators have shown that this is the same time period during which sexually dimorphic patterns of behavior are specified in flies. Neurons that co-express fruitless and choline acetyl transferase are found in varying numbers within different clusters of fruitless-expressing neurons: together they make up approximately 10% of the pool of fruitless-expressing neurons in the brain and nerve cord.