TY  - GEN
T1  - ODR-1 acts in AWB neurons to determine the sexual identity of C. elegans pheromone blends
AU  - Aprison, Erin Z.
AU  - Ruvinsky, Ilya
DO  - 10.17912/micropub.biology.000507
UR  - http://beta.micropublication.org/journals/biology/micropub-biology-000507/
AB  - In C. elegans, complex blends of small molecules act as pheromones; the best known of these are ascarosides (Srinivasan et al., 2008; Srinivasan et al., 2012). Although hermaphrodites and males produce similar ascaroside profiles, there are several notable and functionally consequential differences. The best studied one is that males excrete blends enriched in ascr#10, whereas hermaphrodite blends are enriched in a nearly-identical (a difference of a single unsaturated bond) ascr#3 (Izrayelit et al., 2012). Previously, we showed that hermaphrodites exposed to the male pheromone have an enlarged population of germline precursor cells (Aprison and Ruvinsky, 2016). This effect can be recapitulated by physiological concentrations of synthetic ascr#10 and ascr#3 (Aprison and Ruvinsky, 2016), as long as the concentration of the male-enriched ascr#10 is higher than that of ascr#3 (Aprison and Ruvinsky, 2017). Central to discriminating between blends with different concentration ratios of these two ascarosides is that ascr#3 counteracts the effect of ascr#10, resulting in no discernable effect when the concentration of ascr#3 was greater or equal to that of ascr#10 (Aprison and Ruvinsky, 2017). Therefore, in our paradigm, a mutant strain can be tested for the ability to respond to ascr#3 only if it responds to ascr#10 (this response is manifested as an increased number of germline precursors). In the absence of ascr#10 response, ascr#3 response cannot be assessed because this compound does not change the number of germline precursors (Figure 1A).
PY  - 2022
JO  - microPublication Biology
ER  -