Current Biology
Volume 26, Issue 7, 4 April 2016, Pages 943-949
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A Neural Basis for Control of Cichlid Female Reproductive Behavior by Prostaglandin F

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.01.067Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Prostaglandin F injection rapidly leads to naturalistic female spawning behavior

  • A single receptor for prostaglandin F, Ptgfr, is expressed in four brain regions

  • Deletion of Ptgfr with CRISPR yields females that do not exhibit sexual behavior

Summary

In most species, females time reproduction to coincide with fertility. Thus, identifying factors that signal fertility to the brain can provide access to neural circuits that control sexual behaviors. In vertebrates, levels of key signaling molecules rise at the time of fertility to prime the brain for reproductive behavior [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11], but how and where they regulate neural circuits is not known [12, 13]. Specifically, 17α,20β-dihydroxyprogesterone (DHP) and prostaglandin F (PGF) levels rise in teleost fish around the time of ovulation [10, 14, 15]. In an African cichlid fish, Astatotilapia burtoni, fertile females select a mate and perform a stereotyped spawning routine, offering quantifiable behavioral outputs of neural circuits. We show that, within minutes, PGF injection activates a naturalistic pattern of sexual behavior in female A. burtoni. We also identify cells in the brain that transduce the prostaglandin signal to mate and show that the gonadal steroid DHP modulates mRNA levels of the putative receptor for PGF (Ptgfr). We use CRISPR/Cas9 to generate the first targeted gene mutation in A. burtoni and show that Ptgfr is necessary for the initiation of sexual behavior, uncoupling sexual behavior from reproductive status. Our findings are consistent with a model in which PGF communicates fertility status via Ptgfr to circuits in the brain that drive female sexual behavior. Our targeted genome modification in a cichlid fish shows that dissection of gene function can reveal basic control mechanisms for behaviors in this large family of species with diverse and fascinating social systems [16, 17].

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