FLIC: High-Throughput, Continuous Analysis of Feeding Behaviors in Drosophila

Ro, Jennifer; Harvanek, Zachary M.; Pletcher, Scott D.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0101107

Cited by 158 publications

(215 citation statements)

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“…Within a few years, electron microscopy is likely to produce images of an entire fly brain that can be used for circuit tracing. New feeding assays allow a more realtime picture of the subtleties of feeding behavior (Itskov et al 2014, Ro et al 2014, Qi et al 2015.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Motor control of fly feeding

McKellar¹

2016

Journal of Neurogenetics

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Following considerable progress on the molecular and cellular basis of taste perception in fly sensory neurons, the time is now ripe to explore how taste information, integrated with hunger and satiety, undergo a sensorimotor transformation to lead to the motor actions of feeding behavior. I examine what is known of feeding circuitry in adult flies from more than 250 years of work in larger flies and from newer work in Drosophila. I review the anatomy of the proboscis, its muscles and their functions (where known), its motor neurons, interneurons known to receive taste inputs, interneurons that diverge from taste circuitry to provide information to other circuits, interneurons from other circuits that converge on feeding circuits, proprioceptors that influence the motor control of feeding, and sites of integration of hunger and satiety on feeding circuits. In spite of the several neuron types now known, a connected pathway from taste inputs to feeding motor outputs has yet to be found. We are on the threshold of an era where these individual components will be assembled into circuits, revealing how nervous system architecture leads to the control of behavior.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Motor control of fly feeding

McKellar¹

2016

Journal of Neurogenetics

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“…The Drosophila central nervous system (CNS) executes food intake control using various mechanisms, which can be studied using a wide range of methods. Food labeling by dyes or radioactivity, food uptake quantification by the so-called capillary feeder assay , proboscis extension reflex assay (Shiraiwa and Carlson, 2007), and automated food intake monitoring using the flyPAD or Fly Liquid-Food Interaction Counter (Ro et al, 2014) can be used to quantify feeding. Food preference assays are used to determine important feeding parameters such as total intake, meal size, meal frequency and feeding motivation (reviewed in Branch and Shen, 2017;Deshpande et al, 2014).…”

Section: Musclementioning

confidence: 99%

Drosophilaas a model to study obesity and metabolic disease

Musselman

Kühnlein

2018

Journal of Experimental Biology

179

130

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Excess adipose fat accumulation, or obesity, is a growing problem worldwide in terms of both the rate of incidence and the severity of obesity-associated metabolic disease. Adipose tissue evolved in animals as a specialized dynamic lipid storage depot: adipose cells synthesize fat (a process called lipogenesis) when energy is plentiful and mobilize stored fat (a process called lipolysis) when energy is needed. When a disruption of lipid homeostasis favors increased fat synthesis and storage with little turnover owing to genetic predisposition, overnutrition or sedentary living, complications such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease are more likely to arise. The vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster (Diptera: Drosophilidae) is used as a model to better understand the mechanisms governing fat metabolism and distribution. Flies offer a wealth of paradigms with which to study the regulation and physiological effects of fat accumulation. Obese flies accumulate triacylglycerols in the fat body, an organ similar to mammalian adipose tissue, which specializes in lipid storage and catabolism. Discoveries in Drosophila have ranged from endocrine hormones that control obesity to subcellular mechanisms that regulate lipogenesis and lipolysis, many of which are evolutionarily conserved. Furthermore, obese flies exhibit pathophysiological complications, including hyperglycemia, reduced longevity and cardiovascular functionsimilar to those observed in obese humans. Here, we review some of the salient features of the fly that enable researchers to study the contributions of feeding, absorption, distribution and the metabolism of lipids to systemic physiology.

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“…2D). Third, we used a novel assay [the fly liquid food interaction counter (FLIC)] that quantifies food interactions by allowing the fly to complete a low-voltage electrical circuit by touching or consuming a liquid food while standing on a metal base (18). We found that there was no difference between the ΔGr64 and control flies in the amount of time spent interacting with the food (P = 0.56; Fig.…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Gustatory and metabolic perception of nutrient stress in Drosophila

Linford

Ro²,

Chung

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Sleep loss is an adaptive response to nutrient deprivation that alters behavior to maximize the chances of feeding before imminent death. Organisms must maintain systems for detecting the quality of the food source to resume healthy levels of sleep when the stress is alleviated. We determined that gustatory perception of sweetness is both necessary and sufficient to suppress starvation-induced sleep loss when animals encounter nutrient-poor food sources. We further find that blocking specific dopaminergic neurons phenocopies the absence of gustatory stimulation, suggesting a specific role for these neurons in transducing taste information to sleep centers in the brain. Finally, we show that gustatory perception is required for survival, specifically in a low nutrient environment. Overall, these results demonstrate an important role for gustatory perception when environmental food availability approaches zero and illustrate the interplay between sensory and metabolic perception of nutrient availability in regulating behavioral state.tarvation is a condition of extreme nutrient stress that leads to rapid death. On detecting the absence of environmental nutrient sources, organisms use multiple strategies to adjust resource allocation to maximize the chances of finding a food source, including inducing longer foraging searches (1) and limiting sleep behavior (2, 3). Sleep loss in Drosophila melanogaster is a characteristic response to nutrient deprivation that appears ∼12 h after the removal of a food source; in males, it is followed by death in another 12 h (2). Sleep loss is thought to represent a cost to the organism (4-6), and mechanisms for evaluating the environment and terminating this behavioral response when food is available would likely confer an adaptive benefit. A deeper understanding of how organisms perceive and respond to environmental stress could offer substantial benefit to humans attempting to maintain maximal health in the face of food shortages and unstable environmental conditions. The strategies used by organisms to evaluate the sufficiency of a food source and to initiate or suppress sleep loss under very low nutrient conditions remain largely unknown and represent one path toward understanding global stress response. ResultsWe have observed, as previously reported, that adult Drosophila spontaneously adjust their behavioral patterns to reduce sleep when starved (Fig. 1A) (2, 7). To more completely understand how organisms modulate sleep in response to food availability, we measured the extent of nutrient deprivation required to induce sleep loss. These assays consist of monitoring the activity of male Canton-S flies on a complete medium (10% sugar:Brewer's yeast medium; Materials and Methods) for 1 d (day 1) to estimate baseline sleep in the fully fed condition, followed by data collection from 1 or more days on a 1% agar-only starvation medium (day 2+), which provides water and humidity but not nutrients. We modified this procedure by augmenting the agar medium with either 50 mM D-glucose ...

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FLIC: High-Throughput, Continuous Analysis of Feeding Behaviors in Drosophila

Cited by 158 publications

References 20 publications

Motor control of fly feeding

Motor control of fly feeding

Drosophilaas a model to study obesity and metabolic disease

Gustatory and metabolic perception of nutrient stress in Drosophila

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