Studies on the population aggregation and regulation mechanism of Drosophila

On January 21, Zhu Yan laboratory, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, published an online article entitled "emergence of social cluster by collective pairwise encoders in Drosophila" in eLife magazine, which revealed that under laboratory conditions, Drosophila spontaneously gathered to form a stable and orderly population, a highly dynamic process involving a large number of but short-term individual interactions In nature, many species, from microorganisms to human beings, show an amazing phenomenon of clustering It is a very important survival strategy that the same species tend to gather to form a close group, which is helpful to find food, resist foreign enemies together, improve sensitivity to changes in the external environment, and enhance group decision-making From disordered individuals to highly ordered emergence of group structure is an important life process, and also an important premise to understand the origin and stability mechanism of animal group behavior Drosophila is generally considered as a non social insect, but some studies have found that Drosophila can show a tendency of aggregation without any external stimulation, so how does Drosophila self-organized aggregation into a stable population? How is the social distance between members of the group regulated? What is the neural loop mechanism that controls this behavior? In recent years, Zhuyan laboratory has carried out a series of studies on the neural and molecular mechanisms of Drosophila social In this study, the team combined high-resolution behavior tracking and found that clustering behavior depended on a large number of paired, asymmetric, short-lived individual encounters, and the touch of two flies' peripheral organs during the encounter was the key to trigger this behavior Further research found that the deprivation of the five main perceptions will lead to abnormal encounters, which makes the whole group unable to form In addition, PPK specific mechanical sensing neurons play an important role in regulating self-organizing behavior by means of neuronal inactivation and photogenetic activation The results of in vivo functional imaging indicated that PPK neurons located at the tip of Drosophila legs were specifically activated due to physical contact Using computer simulation of long-distance attraction and short-distance repulsion, the team found that this highly regular group structure can be realized by relying on local individual perception and information exchange (BIOON Com)