Time: 12:00-13:30 on Tuesday, Mar. 13, 2018
Venue: B323, Medical Science Building, Tsinghua University

Dr. Yufeng Pan, Professor, School of Life Science, Southeast University

Host: Dr. Wei Zhang

Abstract: How the potential for animal behavior is built into nervous system is a fundamental question in neuroscience. It is generally believed that animal behaviors are controlled together by nature (genes) and nurture (environment), but how these two factors jointly control animal behaviors is still poorly understood. I use male courtship behavior in D. melanogaster as a model system to study the following questions: (1) How does doublesex gene, which is well conserved, function in the nervous system to allow male courtship in an experience-dependent manner? (2) How does social experience affect the courtship circuitry in molecular and neuronal levels? (3) How is the doublesex- and experience-dependent courtship pathway different from the innate fruitless-dependent pathway? (4) How does nervous system select particular behaviors (e.g. sleep, sex or feeding) based on internal and external cues? I will discuss these questions in my talk.