Innate Behavior Sequence Progression by Dilp8-Mediated Interorgan Crosstalk

HEREDIA FABIANA; VOLONTÉ YANEL ANDREA (PRIMER AUTOR); PEREIRINHA JOANA ; MAGDALENA FERNANDEZ-ACOSTA; CASIMIRO ANDREIA; CLAUDIA BELÉM; VIEGAS FILIPE; KOHTARO TANAKA; JULIANE MENEZES; MAITE ARANA; GISELE CARDOSO; MACEDO ANDRE; MALWINA KOTOWICZ; PRADO SPALM FACUNDO; DIBO MARCOS; RAQUEL MONFARDINI; TATIANA TORRES; CESAR MENDES; ANDRES GARELLI; GONTIJO ALISSON

Workshop; The 2021 International Insect Hormone - Virtual - Workshop; 2021

Drosophila larvae undergo a dramatic change in body shape at the end of the larval period. During this process, the long, flexible, and transparent cuticle of the larvae is transformed into a short, sclerotized, and tanned puparium. Here, we describe how the relaxin-like Dilp8-Lgr3 pathway acts during pupariation to promote the progression of the pupariation motor program, which is a series of stereotyped muscular contractions that occur in parallel to structural modifications of the cuticle. This pathway has been previously shown to regulate developmental stability in Drosophila by coupling the timing of pupariation with the growth status of the imaginal discs where Dilp8 acts on two brain neurons to delay the biosynthesis of the major insect molting hormone ecdysone. During puparium morphogenesis, however, Lgr3 is required in a separate population of central nervous system neurons to transduce the Dilp8 signaling that is triggered as a response to ecdysone in the cuticle epidermis. This interorgan signaling event is critical for proper progression of the pupariation motor program. Our work suggests that the peptide hormone Dilp8 and the GPCR Lgr3 constitute a new neuroendocrine pathway directly contributing to puparium morphogenesis.