Why might there be selective pressure to enhance the

coding of bitter taste? Why not simply coexpress all bitter receptors in one type of neuron that activates a single circuit, thereby triggering equivalent avoidance of all bitter compounds? Not all bitter compounds are equally toxic and it is not clear that there is a direct correlation between bitterness and toxicity (Glendinning, 1994). It is even possible that in certain contexts, such as the selection of egg-laying sites or self-medication, some bitter tastants may have a positive valence (Singer et al., 2009 and Yang et al., 2008). We note that in our behavioral analysis, flies tended to be more sensitive find more to bitter compounds that activate I-a than I-b neurons, suggesting that I-a ligands are perceived to be more bitter than I-b selleck chemical ligand, as if I-a ligands were more toxic. A more nuanced behavioral decision based on the intensities of bitter compounds may be made within the complex milieu of rotting fruit. The olfactory and taste systems of the fly differ in the anatomy of their projections to the brain. Olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) project to the antennal lobe, which consists of spherical modules called glomeruli (Su

et al., 2009). ORNs of a particular functional specificity converge upon a common glomerulus and there is a distinct glomerulus for each type of ORN. Taste neurons project from the labellum to a region of the ventral brain called the subesophageal ganglion (SOG) that does not have such an obviously

modular structure (Power, 1943, Stocker, 1994 and Stocker and Schorderet, 1981). A study using Gr66a-GAL4, which marks all or almost all bitter cells in the labellum, and Gr5a-GAL4, which marks all or almost all sugar cells, revealed that the two classes of cells project to spatially segregated regions of the SOG ( Thorne et al., 2004 and Wang et al., 2004). However, subsets of bitter cells labeled by Gr-GAL4 drivers did not show obvious spatial segregation within the region of the SOG labeled by Gr66a-GAL4. Markers of different subsets of sugar cells also showed overlapping projections in the SOG. These studies did not, then, reveal at a gross level the kind of spatially discrete projections that are characteristic of the olfactory system. However, analysis of the SOG at higher resolution has recently revealed more detailed for substructure (Miyazaki and Ito, 2010). Different sets of Gr66a-expressing neurons such as those expressing Gr47a, an I-b-specific receptor, showed distinguishable projection patterns, leading to the suggestion that different subregions process different subsets of bitter compounds. Moreover, similarity in projection patterns does not imply identity of function. For example, in the antennal lobe, ORNs that express the odor receptor Or67d converge on the DA1 glomerulus in both males and females, but the projections from DA1 to the protocerebrum are sexually dimorphic ( Datta et al., 2008).