An international team co-led by researchers here in the Department of Zoology has mapped male and female fly brains at high enough resolution to identify sex differences in how neurons are wired.
Building on earlier work mapping the female fly brain, this new study, published today in Cell, generated a high-resolution map of a whole male nervous system. This has enabled comparisons of male and female brains showing that neurons can reroute sensory information into sex-specific behavioural circuits to drive different male and female responses to the same stimuli.
Understanding the interactions between genetics, brain wiring and behaviour is key to explaining how healthy brains generate complex behaviours and what might go wrong during disease.
Senior author of the study, Dr Greg Jefferis, co-leader of our Drosophila Connectomics Group and the Jefferis Group at the MRC LMB, said:
“Understanding how genetic differences translate into differences in brain wiring and behaviour should eventually help us to understand how brains malfunction, which in such cases, including autism and schizophrenia, have a strong genetic basis.”
The other institutions involved are HHMI Janelia Research Campus, Google Research and Champalimaud Foundation. The study received investment from UKRI Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds, the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust.
Read more:
University of Cambridge research news:Comparison of male and female fly brains is unlocking the secret workings of the mind
Berg, S. et al: ‘Sexual dimorphism in the complete connectome of the Drosophila male central nervous system.’ Cell, Sept 2026.
Three related papers are published concurrently by the team:
Tastekin et al: ‘From Sensory Detection to Motor Action: The Comprehensive Drosophila Taste-Feeding Connectome.” Cell, Sept 2026.
Hoeller et al. ‘The organization of visual pathways in the Drosophila brain.’ Cell, Sept 2026.
Rubin et al. ‘Networks of sexually dimorphic neurons that regulate social behaviors in Drosophila.’ Current Biology, Sept 2026.
Images:
Ventral (underneath) view of a representative collection of cell types in the male CNS connectome. Data by the FlyEM Project Team at HHMI-Janelia, the Cambridge Connectomics Group, the MRC-LMB, and Google Research. Rendering by Philip Hubbard.
Male-specific (blue) and sexually dimorphic (orange) cells in the fruit fly nervous system. Data by the FlyEM Project Team at HHMI-Janelia, the Cambridge Connectomics Group, the MRC-LMB, and Google Research. Rendering by Philip Hubbard.