Dr. Liming Wang from Life Sciences Institute, Zhejiang University was invited to write a News & Views article for Nature Neuroscience: how sex prevents violence: the magic of caress (and GABA).
The commentary article described a recent important progress in the field of Drosophila aggressive behavior (which was published in the same issue of Nature Neuroscience, by Quan Yuan et al). The original research article showed that chronic physical interactions between male and female fruit flies suppressed male aggressive behavior, likely via the detection of female-specific non-volatile pheromone, and the activation of a small group of male-specific, GABA-ergic neurons in the male brain. This discovery offers an entry point to further understand the neural circuitry of aggressive behavior, and how this behavior is modulated by previous social interactions.
The commentary article also reviewed the recent progress of how aggressive behavior in fruit flies is modulated by both short- and long-term interactions with both male and female flies. The comparisons pointed to potential common themes for the social regulation of aggressive behavior in fruit flies, and also suggested future research directions that might lead to major breakthroughs.
