Recent Advances in the Genetic Dissection of Neural Circuits in Drosophila

Abstract

Nervous systems endow animals with cognition and behavior. To understand how nervous systems control behavior, neural circuits mediating distinct functions need to be identified and characterized. With superior genetic manipulability, Drosophila is a model organism at the leading edge of neural circuit analysis. We briefly introduce the state-of-the-art genetic tools that permit precise labeling of neurons and their interconnectivity and investigating what is happening in the brain of a behaving animal and manipulating neurons to determine how behaviors are affected. Brain-wide wiring diagrams, created by light and electron microscopy, bring neural circuit analysis to a new level and scale. Studies enabled by these tools advances our understanding of the nervous system in relation to cognition and behavior.

Gut microbiome modulates Drosophila aggression through octopamine signaling

“…Accumulating evidence indicates that the microbiome affects a broad spectrum of animal physiology and behaviors 1,48,49 . It remains unclear whether/how Drosophila microbiome is required to modulate innate and social behaviors, including locomotion, courtship, and aggression despite of much advanced genetic tools in this animal model 20 . In this study, we demonstrated that microbiome specifically modulates aggressive behaviors in both males and females.…”

“…Due to the diversity of mammalian microbiome and the complexity of microbial metabolism, understanding and harnessing their potential is a challenging task. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has a relatively simple commensal community 19 , and fruitful genetic and neuronal tools for manipulating well-defined innate and learned behaviors 20 , making it as a powerful and experimentally tractable system to study how microbiome modulates host behaviors.…”

A subset of DN1p neurons integrates thermosensory inputs to promote wakefulness via CNMa signaling

“…Two independent binary systems (GAL4/UAS and lexA/lexAop) were used for intersectional labeling and manipulating of subgroup neurons. 85 Absence of flippase, the transcriptional stop cassette was retained in UAS-FRT-stop-FRT-Kir2.1 or UAS-FRT-stop-FRT-mCD8-GFP, which disrupt the expression of Kir2.1 or GFP under the GAL4 drivers. In the intersectional cells with both lexA and GAL4 expression, lexAop-FLP were expressed under the lexA driver to produce FLP recombinase, which removes the transcriptional stop cassette ( > stop > ) through FLP/FRT recombination to initiate GAL4-driven Kir2.1 or GFP expression.…”

Gαq splice variants mediate phototransduction, rhodopsin synthesis, and retinal integrity in Drosophila

“…To generate p[UAS::Gαq3] transgenic flies, Gαq3 cDNA was subcloned into the pUAST-attB vector and injected into y 1 ,w67c23;P{CaryattP2} flies. The transgene was subsequently crossed into the nlr mutant background and proteins specifically expressed in the eye using binary expression systems (39).…”