Bacteria is a matter of taste, after all

Le 24 septembre 2026 à 08h00 Séminaire

Microbes, which live in close association with animals, significantly influence their behavior. However, the extreme complexity of the animal nervous system, combined with the immense microbial diversity, poses a major dual obstacle to understanding how microbes modulate animal behavior at the molecular level. Our previous studies have shown that a bacterial compound called peptidoglycan can alter the behavior of the infected host by interacting with Drosophila neurons. Although we have evidence that peptidoglycan can modulate both brain neurons and sensory neurons, the molecular mechanisms that transduce the signal within these neurons, as well as the neural circuits through which they alter the host’s behavior, remained unknown. This is what we have explored.