Experimental study reveals Fish-lips-mediated repulsion prevents incorrect synaptic pairings in Drosophila olfactory circuits, indicating repulsive signaling ensures precise neural assembly.
Significance In the fruit fly olfactory system, 50 classes of olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) make precise synaptic connections with 50 classes of partner projection neurons (PNs). Identification of wiring molecules here can provide general insight into how neural circuits are assembled during development. This paper reports Fish-lips (Fili), a protein spanning the cell membrane, that regulates specific connections in this circuit. We found that some ORN axons are repelled by Fili present on dendrites of nonpartner PNs, preventing them from targeting inappropriate glomeruli. Similarly, some PN dendrites are repelled by Fili expressed by nonpartner ORNs for their correct targeting. These results suggest that Fili mediates repulsion between axons and dendrites of nonsynaptic partners to ensure precise wiring patterns.
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Xie et al. (2019) studied this question.
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