A dimorphic pheromone circuit in Drosophila from sensory input to descending output

A dimorphic pheromone circuit in Drosophila from sensory input to descending output

Innate differences between male and female behaviours must be inscribed in their respective genomes, but how these encode distinct neuronal circuits remains largely unknown. Focusing on sex-specific responses to the cVA pheromone in fruitflies, Richard Axel and colleagues have now identified a chain of four successive neurons carrying olfactory signals down to motor centres, with all male-to-female anatomical differences lying downstream of a co…

I’m sure you’ve often wondered why a certain person awakens you so much sexual desire if there’s no apparent explanation to justify it. Sometimes it’s what we call colloquially ‘love at first sight.’ This strange and powerful connection is hard to put into words but feels all over the body. And even though on most occasions we attribute it to a mysterious ‘spark’, science points to a more biological explanation than we imagine. We mean the power…