Gut bacteria-derived succinate induces enteric nervous system regeneration.

Enteric neurons control gut physiology by regulating peristalsis, nutrient absorption, and secretion . Disruptions in microbial communities caused by antibiotics or enteric infections result in the loss of enteric neurons and long-term motility disorders . However, the signals and underlying mechanisms of this microbiota-neuron communication are unknown.

Overlap and divergence of neural circuits mediating distinct behavioral responses to sugar.

How do neural circuits coordinate multiple behavioral responses to a single sensory cue? Here, we investigate how sweet taste drives appetitive behaviors in Drosophila, including feeding, locomotor suppression, spatial preference, and associative learning. We find that neural circuits mediating different innate responses to sugar are partially overlapping and diverge at the second and third layers. Connectomic analyses reveal distinct subcircuits that mediate different behaviors.

Selective integration of diverse taste inputs within a single taste modality.

A fundamental question in sensory processing is how different channels of sensory input are processed to regulate behavior. Different input channels may converge onto common downstream pathways to drive the same behaviors, or they may activate separate pathways to regulate distinct behaviors. We investigated this question in the bitter taste system, which contains diverse bitter-sensing cells residing in different taste organs.

Taste cues elicit prolonged modulation of feeding behavior in .

Taste cues regulate immediate feeding behavior, but their ability to modulate future behavior has been less well studied. Pairing one taste with another can modulate subsequent feeding responses through associative learning, but this requires simultaneous exposure to both stimuli. We investigated whether exposure to one taste modulates future responses to other tastes even when they do not overlap in time.

Individual bitter-sensing neurons in Drosophila exhibit both ON and OFF responses that influence synaptic plasticity.

The brain generates internal representations that translate sensory stimuli into appropriate behavior. In the taste system, different tastes activate distinct populations of sensory neurons. We investigated the temporal properties of taste responses in Drosophila and discovered that different types of taste sensory neurons show striking differences in their response dynamics.