A functional division of sweet taste neurons that is value-based and task-specific.

Sucrose is an attractive feeding substance and a positive reinforcer for But females have been shown to robustly reject a sucrose-containing option for egg-laying when given a choice between a plain and a sucrose-containing option in specific contexts. How the sweet taste system of promotes context-dependent devaluation of an egg-laying option that contains sucrose, an otherwise highly appetitive tastant, is unknown. Here, we report that devaluation of sweetness/sucrose for egg-laying is executed by a sensory pathway recruited specifically by the sweet neurons on the legs of First, silencing just the leg sweet neurons caused acceptance of the sucrose option in a sucrose versus plain decision, whereas expressing the channelrhodopsin in them caused rejection of a plain option that was "baited" with light over another that was not.

Molecular control limiting sensitivity of sweet taste neurons in .

To assess the biological value of environmental stimuli, animals' sensory systems must accurately decode both the identities and the intensities of these stimuli. While much is known about the mechanism by which sensory neurons detect the identities of stimuli, less is known about the mechanism that controls how sensory neurons respond appropriately to different intensities of stimuli. The ionotropic receptor has been shown to be expressed in different chemosensory neurons for sensing a variety of chemicals.

Learning a Spatial Task by Trial and Error in Drosophila.

The ability to use memory to return to specific locations for foraging is advantageous for survival. Although recent reports have demonstrated that the fruit flies Drosophila melanogaster are capable of visual cue-driven place learning and idiothetic path integration [1-4], the depth and flexibility of Drosophila's ability to solve spatial tasks and the underlying neural substrate and genetic basis have not been extensively explored. Here, we show that Drosophila can remember a reward-baited location through reinforcement learning and do so quickly and without requiring vision.

H2O2-Sensitive Isoforms of Drosophila melanogaster TRPA1 Act in Bitter-Sensing Gustatory Neurons to Promote Avoidance of UV During Egg-Laying.

The evolutionarily conserved TRPA1 channel can sense various stimuli including temperatures and chemical irritants. Recent results have suggested that specific isoforms of Drosophila TRPA1 (dTRPA1) are UV-sensitive and that their UV sensitivity is due to HO sensitivity. However, whether such UV sensitivity served any physiological purposes in animal behavior was unclear.

High Throughput Assay to Examine Egg-Laying Preferences of Individual Drosophila melanogaster.

Recently, egg-laying preference of Drosophila has emerged as a genetically tractable model to study the neural basis of simple decision-making processes. When selecting sites to deposit their eggs, female flies are capable of ranking the relative attractiveness of their options and choosing the "greater of two goods." However, most egg-laying preference assays are not practical if one wants to take a systematic genetic screening approach to search for the circuit basis underlying this simple decision-making process, as they are population-based and laborious to set up.