Nature Bread or Love?

Editor | Xi is an absolutely rational donkey, with the same degree of hunger and thirst.
It is in the middle of a pile of hay and a bucket of water, and is equidistant from the two.
It cannot rationally choose to drink water or eat grass first, and dry it last.
Thirsty and starving
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This is the paradox posed by the 14th-century French philosopher Brittan
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Faced with life's many difficult choices, how can we avoid becoming "Brittan's donkey"? On February 9, 2022, Wang Jing's team from the University of California, San Diego published a research paper titled A nutrient-specific gut hormone arbitrates between courtship and feeding in Nature, reporting for the first time the underlying neural logic of how feeding and courtship behaviors choose between
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How to optimize the choice of courtship and feeding is of great significance to the evolution of species
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The authors found that the Drosophila nervous system has an innate priority system for the choice between courtship and feeding: courtship priority when full, feeding priority when hungry, but there is a rapid switching mechanism after feeding, this priority logic and Maslow's need The pyramid theory is consistent
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It was further found that the behavioral switching between courtship and feeding is achieved by an enteric neuropeptide rapidly switching the neural pathways corresponding to these two behaviors
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This enteric neuropeptide, Diuretic hormone 31 (Dh31), is induced and released by amino acids in food and acts on two independent neural pathways in two brain regions that express Dh31 receptors, shutting down the neural pathways that control feeding behavior, and at the same time Open the neural pathway of courtship behavior and realize fast behavior switching
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This neuropeptide acts as a feed-forward signal before food is absorbed, telling the brain that enough nutrients have been ingested to initiate an energy-guzzling courtship mode
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 In order to investigate whether Dh31 reaches the brain from the gut through the circulatory system, the authors achieved intact circulatory system without craniotomy through three-photon calcium imaging technology, and achieved intact living brain calcium by laser through the Drosophila epidermis The imaging illustrates that the release of the neuropeptide Dh31 from the gut to the brain takes only a few minutes, coinciding with the timing of the behavioral switch
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Through a series of tissue-specific gene downregulation experiments, the authors elucidate the regulatory pathways by which high-protein foods communicate with the brain through enteric neuropeptides to alter behavioral priorities
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Original link: https://doi.
org/10.
1038/s41586-022-04408-7 Reprint notice [Non-original article] The copyright of this article belongs to the author of the article, and you are welcome to forward and share it.
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