Some Mutations Affecting Neural or Muscular Tissues Alter the Physiological Components of the Electroretinogram in<i>Drosophila</i>

Homyk, Theodore; Pye, Quentin N.

doi:10.3109/01677068909167263

Cited by 20 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…These synaptic effects, along with the bang-sensitive phenotype in all 4. mutations studied here, are suppressed by the mutation nap ts (no action potential, temperature-sensitive), which reduces the number of Na + channels (Ganetzky and Wu 1982a;Wu and Ganetzky 1992). Electroretinograms in a bas mutant showed delayed recovery from the prolonged depolarizing after-potential (Homyk and Pye 1989), suggesting effects upon the primary photoreceptors. The tko and eas genes have been sequenced and inferred by homology to encode a mitochondrial ribosomal protein and a choline kinase, respectively (Roydon et al 1987;Pavlidis et al 1993).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altered mechanoreceptor response in Drosophila bang-sensitive mutants

Engel

1994

J Comp Physiol A

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Bang-sensitive mutants of Drosophila melanogaster (bas1, bssMW1, eas2, tko25t) display seizure followed by paralysis when subjected to mechanical shock. However, no physiological or biochemical defect has been found to be common to all of these mutants. In order to observe the effects of bang-sensitive mutations upon an identified neuron, and to study the nature of mechanically induced paralysis, we examined the response of a mechanosensory neuron in these mutants. In each single mutant and the double mutant bas1 bssMW1, the frequency of action potentials in response to a bristle displacement was reduced. This is the first demonstration of a physiological defect common to several of the bang-sensitive mutations. Adaptation of spike frequency, cumulative adaptation to repeated stimulation (fatigue) and the time course of recovery from adaptation were also examined. Recovery from adaptation to a conditioning stimulus was examined in two mutants (bas1 and bssMW1), and initial recovery from adaptation was greater in both mutants. Quantification of receptor potentials was complicated by variability inherent in extracellular recording conditions, but examination of the waveform and range of amplitudes did not indicate clear mutant defects. Therefore the differences observed in the spike response may be due to an alteration of the transfer from receptor potentials to action potential production. DNA sequence analysis of tko and eas has indicated that they encode apparently unrelated biochemical products. Our results suggest that these biochemical lesions lead to a common physiological defect in mechanoreceptors.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altered mechanoreceptor response in Drosophila bang-sensitive mutants

Engel

1994

J Comp Physiol A

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“…The cac gene was recently cloned and shown to encode Review Article a voltage-gated calcium channel h1 subunit (Dmca1A; [67]). The cac mutations were found to be allelic to nightblind-A (nbA), a series of mutations that are defective in visually mediated behaviors [68,69], accompanied by aberrant electroretinographic (ERG) responses to light stimuli [70]. Although cac s homozygotes do not exhibit any detectable phenotype in terms of visuallyguided behavior or ERG pattern, the cac s mutants exhibit visual abnormalities when tested in heteroallelic combinations: cac s /cac L − 6 flies performed poorly in Y-tube phototaxis, and the ERG of cac s /cac L10 flies showed a reduced on-transient followed by an aberrant undershoot [65].…”

Section: Motor Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexual behavior mutants revisited: molecular and cellular basis of Drosophila mating

Yamamoto¹,

Nakano²

1999

Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences (CMLS)

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The study of Drosophila melanogaster by a combination of forward genetics with specific mutants, and reverse genetics, in which a given gene is expressed in an appropriate brain area to test its effect on behavior, provides a unique opportunity to explore the causal relationship between a particular gene, its function in the cell and the behavioral outcome at the organismic level. Enhanced male-to-male courtship has been shown to occur as a result of mutations in several different genes. For example, the Voila mutant exhibits intense GAL4 reporter expression in the tarsal gustatory sensilla, suggesting the importance of tapping by a male on the female abdomen with his forelegs. Feminization of parts of the antennal lobe and mushroom body by targeted expression of a female-determining gene transformer+ (tra+) drives the male to court other males. Mutations in the tra target gene fruitless (fru), which is expressed in the antennal lobe as well as the suboesophageal ganglion (the gustatory inputs are processed here), also induce homosexual courtship in males. These results suggest that sensory inputs mediated and/or processed by the tarsal receptors, suboesophageal ganglion, antennal lobe and mushroom body contribute to the regulation of male-female courtship. Mosaic analysis localized the neural center for male courtship behavior to the posterior dorsal brain, in which the sensory information processed by the aforementioned neural structures may be integrated. Another mosaic study mapped the neural center for female sexual behavior, as measured by her receptiveness to copulation, to the anterior dorsal brain. The issue as to how the mutations that reduce female sexual receptiveness, e.g. dissatisfaction (dsf), spinster (spin) and chaste (cht), affect the structure and/or function of this neural center deserves to be addressed urgently.

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“…The latter explanation turned out to be the case: Shankar Kulkarni and I showed in 1987 that the etiology of abnormal courtship song in this strain maps to a different region of the region of the relevant (X) chromosome-one that was readily separable from the factor which makes the males slow to achieve copulation. Later, it turned out that the cacophony gene does act pleiotropically, as revealed by the effects of other independently isolated alleles (e.g., Homyk & Pye, 1989;Smith et al, 1998;Dellinger et al, 2000;Chan et al, 2002), although the original mutation at the locus is much more limited in its behavioral effects.…”

Section: Superficial Courtship Mutantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review

Hall

2002

Journal of Neurogenetics

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Some Mutations Affecting Neural or Muscular Tissues Alter the Physiological Components of the Electroretinogram inDrosophila

Cited by 20 publications

References 22 publications

Altered mechanoreceptor response in Drosophila bang-sensitive mutants

Altered mechanoreceptor response in Drosophila bang-sensitive mutants

Sexual behavior mutants revisited: molecular and cellular basis of Drosophila mating

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