{"doi":"10.1016/j.celrep.2025.116016","title":"Single-nucleus neuronal transcriptional profiling of male C. elegans uncovers regulators of sex-specific and sex-shared behaviors","abstract":"Sexual differentiation of the nervous system drives profound neurobiological and behavioral differences between the sexes across various organisms, including Caenorhabditis elegans. Using single-nucleus RNA sequencing, we profiled and compared adult male and hermaphrodite C. elegans neurons, generating an atlas of adult male-specific and sex-shared neurons. We expanded the molecular map of male-specific neurons and identified highly dimorphic expression of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), neuropeptides, and ion channels. Our data demonstrate sex-shared neurons exhibit substantial heterogeneity between the sexes, while sex-specific neurons repurpose conserved molecular pathways to regulate dimorphic behaviors. We show that the PHD neurons display remarkable similarity to sex-shared AWA neurons, suggesting partial repurposing of conserved pathways, and that they and the GPCR SRT-18 may play a role in pheromone sensing. We further demonstrate that the ubiquitously expressed MAPK phosphatase vhp-1 regulates both sex-specific and sex-shared behaviors. Our data provide a rich resource for discovering sex-specific transcriptomic differences and the molecular basis of sex-specific behaviors.","journal":"Cell Reports","year":2025,"id":516279,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":10,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.627,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":424636,"name":"Jonathan St. Ange","orcid":"0009-0001-2319-8174","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1071760,"name":"Yifei Weng","orcid":"0009-0003-6229-8631","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":256013,"name":"Rachel Kaletsky","orcid":"0000-0002-7176-9154","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":256015,"name":"Coleen T. Murphy","orcid":"0000-0002-8257-984X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":382607,"name":"Katherine Morillo","orcid":"0000-0002-6510-4543","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":86,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:48:49.486328Z","pmid":"40682776","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}