Organisms must be able to accurately assess a constantly changing environment as they navigate their surrounding – avoiding danger, remaining in beneficial areas, and determining whether or not a potential mate is in the vicinity. C. elegans males sense nearby hermaphrodites through pheromones of the ascaroside family of small-molecule social cues. The sex-specific ascarosides, namely ascarosides #3 and #8, are sensed via the male-specific CEM neurons. Laser cell ablation studies have confirmed that the CEM neurons are necessary and sufficient for sensation of ascaroside #8, whereas ascaroside #3 sensation requires ASK neurons as well. While the four CEMs are considered to be of a single class of neurons, recent work has shown that individual CEMs respond uniquely to these cues (Narayan et al, 2016). The neurophysiological properties of these individual neurons are stereotyped, yet summation of the four CEMs suggests a heterogeneous response to ascarosides #3 and #8. To understand the molecular mechanisms of these differences in response to the stimuli, we isolated transcriptomes from each of the four individual CEM neurons. We then performed RNA-seq analysis to determine genes with elevated expression levels in these sex-specific sensory neurons. We created GFP-promoter fusions to confirm expression within a single CEM neuron for each gene. We identified five potential receptor candidates necessary for sensing the two ascarosides using the CEM transcriptomic data and gene ontology analysis. We intend to extend these findings to manipulate individual CEM neurons with optogenetic tools to dissect how they communicate with each other to drive male behavior.