0000000000461996
AUTHOR
Mégane M. Simonnet
Testing <em>Drosophila</em> Olfaction with a Y-maze Assay
Detecting signals from the environment is essential for animals to ensure their survival. To this aim, they use environmental cues such as vision, mechanoreception, hearing, and chemoperception through taste, via direct contact or through olfaction, which represents the response to a volatile molecule acting at longer range. Volatile chemical molecules are very important signals for most animals in the detection of danger, a source of food, or to communicate between individuals. Drosophila melanogaster is one of the most common biological models for scientists to explore the cellular and molecular basis of olfaction. In order to highlight olfactory abilities of this small insect, we describ…
The Amino Acid Transporter JhI-21 Coevolves with Glutamate Receptors, Impacts NMJ Physiology, and Influences Locomotor Activity in Drosophila Larvae
AbstractChanges in synaptic physiology underlie neuronal network plasticity and behavioral phenomena, which are adjusted during development. The Drosophila larval glutamatergic neuromuscular junction (NMJ) represents a powerful synaptic model to investigate factors impacting these processes. Amino acids such as glutamate have been shown to regulate Drosophila NMJ physiology by modulating the clustering of postsynaptic glutamate receptors and thereby regulating the strength of signal transmission from the motor neuron to the muscle cell. To identify amino acid transporters impacting glutmatergic signal transmission, we used Evolutionary Rate Covariation (ERC), a recently developed bioinforma…