Topic: M-cells

The circadian system regulates the timing of multiple molecular, physiological, metabolic, and behavioral phenomena. In Drosophila as in other species, most of the research on how the timekeeping system in the brain controls timing of behavioral outputs has been conducted in males, or sex was not included as a biological variable. The main circadian pacemaker neurons in Drosophila, the small ventral lateral neurons (s-LNvs), also known as M-cells, release the neuropeptide Pigment Dispersing Factor (PDF), which functions as a key synchronizing factor in the network with complex effects on other