Nutrigenomic Regulation of Sensory Plasticity

Diet profoundly influences brain physiology, but how nutritional information is transmuted into neural activity and behavior changes remains elusive. Here we show that the metabolic enzyme O-GlcNAc Transferase (OGT) moonlights on the chromatin of the D. melanogaster gustatory neurons to instruct changes in chromatin accessibility and transcription that underlie sensory adaptations to a high sugar diet. OGT works synergistically with the Mitogen Activated Kinase/Extracellular signal Regulated Kinase (MAPK/ERK) rolled and its effector stripe (also known as EGR2 or Krox20) to integrate activity information. OGT also cooperates with the epigenetic silencer Polycomb Repressive Complex 2.1 (PRC2.1) to decrease chromatin accessibility and repress transcription in the high sugar diet. This integration of nutritional and activity information changes the taste neurons’ responses to sugar and flies’ ability to sense sweetness. Our findings reveal how nutrigenomic signaling generates cell-specific responses to global nutrient variations.