13:30 - 15:30
Fri-S7
Goethe Hall
Chair/s:
Thomas O. Auer
In this symposium we will cover taste research in bird, cephalopod, fish and fly species drawing a broad picture of taste receptor and circuit evolution across animal phyla. We will highlight the strength of a comparative framework to extract general principles of chemosensory circuit function based on novel genomic, transcriptomic and physiological methods in classical model and non-model species in aquatic and non-aquatic environments.
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A novel mechanism underlying selective loss of sugar-sensing in wrynecks
Fri-S7-004
Presented by: Julia F. Cramer
Julia F. Cramer 1, Eliot T. Miller 2, Meng-Ching Ko 1, Qiaoyi Liang 1, Glenn Cockburn 1, Tomoya Nakagita 3, 4, Massimiliano Cardinale 5, Leonida Fusani 6, 7, Yasuka Toda 3, Maude W. Baldwin 1
1 Evolution of Sensory Systems Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Seewiesen, Germany, 2 Macaulay Library, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA, 3 Department of Agricultural Chemistry, School of Agriculture, Meiji University, Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan, 4 Proteo-Science Center, Ehime University, Matsuyama, Ehime, Japan, 5 Department of Aquatic Resources, Institute of Marine Research, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Lysekil, Sweden, 6 Austrian Ornithological Centre, Konrad-Lorenz Institute of Ethology, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Wien, Austria, 7 Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Wien, Austria
Changes in sensory receptors can shift how organisms perceive the world, directly affecting their interaction with the environment. Although receptor sensitivities can be highly contingent on changes occurring early in a lineage’s evolutionary history, subsequent shifts in a species’ behavior and ecology may exert selective pressure to modify and even reverse sensory receptor capabilities. The extent to which sensory reversion occurs, as well as the mechanisms underlying such shifts are not well understood. In our study, we use functional cell assays for receptor profiling as well as behavioral preference tests and uncover both an early gain as well as an unexpected mechanism for a surprising subsequent loss of sugar sensing in woodpeckers and wrynecks, members of the widespread and primarily insectivorous Picidae family of landbirds. Our analyses show that, similar to hummingbirds and songbirds, the ancestors of woodpeckers repurposed their T1R1-T1R3 savory (umami) receptor to detect sugars. Unexpectedly, while woodpeckers seem to have broadly retained this ability, wrynecks (an enigmatic ant-eating group sister to all other woodpeckers) selectively lost sugar sensing through a novel mechanism involving a single amino acid change in the T1R3 transmembrane domain. The identification of this molecular microswitch responsible for a sensory shift in taste receptors uncovers the molecular basis of a sensory reversion in vertebrates and offers novel insights into structure-function relationships during sensory receptor evolution.
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