Synchronous and opponent thermosensors use flexible cross-inhibition to orchestrate thermal homeostasis.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34452914.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abg6707 and PMC identifier 8397275.
- Licence recorded as CC BY-NC.
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Abstract
Body temperature homeostasis is essential and reliant upon the integration of outputs from multiple classes of cooling- and warming-responsive cells. The computations that integrate these outputs are not understood. Here, we discover a set of warming cells (WCs) and show that the outputs of these WCs combine with previously described cooling cells (CCs) in a cross-inhibition computation to drive thermal homeostasis in larval <i>Drosophila</i> WCs and CCs detect temperature changes using overlapping combinations of ionotropic receptors: Ir68a, Ir93a, and Ir25a for WCs and Ir21a, Ir93a, and Ir25a for CCs. WCs mediate avoidance to warming while cross-inhibiting avoidance to cooling, and CCs mediate avoidance to cooling while cross-inhibiting avoidance to warming. Ambient temperature-dependent regulation of the strength of WC- and CC-mediated cross-inhibition keeps larvae near their homeostatic set point. Using neurophysiology, quantitative behavioral analysis, and connectomics, we demonstrate how flexible integration between warming and cooling pathways can orchestrate homeostatic thermoregulation.