/ overexpression impairs neural function.

Pathogenic variants in , a gene encoding for an autophagy adaptor termed ALFY, are linked to neurodevelopmental delay and altered brain size in human probands. While the role of loss-of-function is extensively studied in neurons, little is known about the effects of upregulation in different cell types of the central nervous system (CNS). We show that overexpression of the ortholog, , in either glia or neurons impaired autophagy and locomotion.

The adhesion G-protein-coupled receptor mayo/CG11318 controls midgut development in Drosophila.

Adhesion G-protein-coupled receptors (aGPCRs) form a large family of cell surface molecules with versatile tasks in organ development. Many aGPCRs still await their functional and pharmacological deorphanization. Here, we characterized the orphan aGPCR CG11318/mayo of Drosophila melanogaster and found it expressed in specific regions of the gastrointestinal canal and anal plates, epithelial specializations that control ion homeostasis.

Rewarding Capacity of Optogenetically Activating a Giant GABAergic Central-Brain Interneuron in Larval .

Larvae of the fruit fly are a powerful study case for understanding the neural circuits underlying behavior. Indeed, the numerical simplicity of the larval brain has permitted the reconstruction of its synaptic connectome, and genetic tools for manipulating single, identified neurons allow neural circuit function to be investigated with relative ease and precision. We focus on one of the most complex neurons in the brain of the larva (of either sex), the GABAergic anterior paired lateral neuron (APL).

Developmental emergence of sleep rhythms enables long-term memory in .

In adulthood, sleep-wake rhythms are one of the most prominent behaviors under circadian control. However, during early life, sleep is spread across the 24-hour day. The mechanism through which sleep rhythms emerge, and consequent advantage conferred to a juvenile animal, is unknown.

The making of a maggot brain.

The way neurons in the brain rewire in larvae as they turn to adult fruit flies sheds light on how complete metamorphosis was 'invented' over the course of evolution.

The Analysis of Aversive Olfactory-Taste Learning and Memory in Larvae.

larvae are able to associate an odor stimulus with a temporally overlapping teaching signal encoding reward or punishment. Here, we describe a standardized experimental setup that allows the analysis of larval aversive-odor-taste learning and memory. This is a Pavlovian learning experiment with a single training trial in which larvae are presented with two specific odors in succession, one odor together with salt at a high concentration that is harmful to the larva.

Learning and Memory in Larvae.

The larva has become an attractive model system for studying fundamental questions in neuroscience. Although the focus was initially on topics such as the structure of genes, mechanisms of inheritance, genetic regulation of development, and the function and physiology of ion channels, today it is often on the cellular and molecular principles of naive and learned behavior. larvae have developed different mechanisms, often widespread in similar manifestations in the animal kingdom, to orient themselves toward olfactory, gustatory, mechanosensory, thermal, and visual stimuli to coordinate their locomotion appropriately.

Synchronous and opponent thermosensors use flexible cross-inhibition to orchestrate thermal homeostasis.

Body temperature homeostasis is essential and reliant upon the integration of outputs from multiple classes of cooling- and warming-responsive cells. The computations that integrate these outputs are not understood. Here, we discover a set of warming cells (WCs) and show that the outputs of these WCs combine with previously described cooling cells (CCs) in a cross-inhibition computation to drive thermal homeostasis in larval WCs and CCs detect temperature changes using overlapping combinations of ionotropic receptors: Ir68a, Ir93a, and Ir25a for WCs and Ir21a, Ir93a, and Ir25a for CCs.

Ethanol-guided behavior in Drosophila larvae.

Chemosensory signals allow vertebrates and invertebrates not only to orient in its environment toward energy-rich food sources to maintain nutrition but also to avoid unpleasant or even poisonous substrates. Ethanol is a substance found in the natural environment of Drosophila melanogaster. Accordingly, D.

Controlling the behaviour of Drosophila melanogaster via smartphone optogenetics.

Invertebrates such as Drosophila melanogaster have proven to be a valuable model organism for studies of the nervous system. In order to control neuronal activity, optogenetics has evolved as a powerful technique enabling non-invasive stimulation using light. This requires light sources that can deliver patterns of light with high temporal and spatial precision.

Identification of Dopaminergic Neurons That Can Both Establish Associative Memory and Acutely Terminate Its Behavioral Expression.

An adaptive transition from exploring the environment in search of vital resources to exploiting these resources once the search was successful is important to all animals. Here we study the neuronal circuitry that allows larval of either sex to negotiate this exploration-exploitation transition. We do so by combining Pavlovian conditioning with high-resolution behavioral tracking, optogenetic manipulation of individually identified neurons, and EM data-based analyses of synaptic organization.

Recurrent architecture for adaptive regulation of learning in the insect brain.

Dopaminergic neurons (DANs) drive learning across the animal kingdom, but the upstream circuits that regulate their activity and thereby learning remain poorly understood. We provide a synaptic-resolution connectome of the circuitry upstream of all DANs in a learning center, the mushroom body of Drosophila larva. We discover afferent sensory pathways and a large population of neurons that provide feedback from mushroom body output neurons and link distinct memory systems (aversive and appetitive).

Food restriction reconfigures naïve and learned choice behavior in larvae.

In many animals, the establishment and expression of food-related memory is limited by the presence of food and promoted by its absence, implying that this behavior is driven by motivation. In the past, this has already been demonstrated in various insects including honeybees and adult . For larvae, which are characterized by an immense growth and the resulting need for constant food intake, however, knowledge is rather limited.

Solvate ionic liquids based on lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide-glyme systems: coordination in MD simulations with scaled charges.

Equimolar mixtures of lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (Li[NTf2]) with triglyme or tetraglyme (small oligoethers) are regarded as a new class of ionic liquids, the so-called solvate ionic liquids. In these mixtures, the glyme molecules wrap around the lithium ions forming crown-ether like [Li(glyme)1]+ complex cations. New molecular dynamics (MD) simulations suggest that the lithium-glyme coordination is stronger than that predicted in a former MD study [K.

Reversal learning in larvae.

Adjusting behavior to changed environmental contingencies is critical for survival, and reversal learning provides an experimental handle on such cognitive flexibility. Here, we investigate reversal learning in larval Using odor-taste associations, we establish olfactory reversal learning in the appetitive and the aversive domain, using either fructose as a reward or high-concentration sodium chloride as a punishment, respectively. Reversal learning is demonstrated both in differential and in absolute conditioning, in either valence domain.

MEK inhibitor cobimetinib rescues a dRaf mutant lethal phenotype in Drosophila melanogaster.

Since Drosophila melanogaster has proven to be a useful model system to study phenotypes of oncogenic mutations and to identify new anti-cancer drugs, we generated human BRAF homologous dRaf mutant (dRaf ) Drosophila melanogaster strains to use these for characterisation of mutant phenotypes and exploit these phenotypes for drug testing. For mutant gene expression, the GAL4/UAS expression system was used. dRaf was expressed tissue-specific in the eye, epidermis, heart, wings, secretory glands and in the whole animal.

Reward signaling in a recurrent circuit of dopaminergic neurons and peptidergic Kenyon cells.

Dopaminergic neurons in the brain of the Drosophila larva play a key role in mediating reward information to the mushroom bodies during appetitive olfactory learning and memory. Using optogenetic activation of Kenyon cells we provide evidence that recurrent signaling exists between Kenyon cells and dopaminergic neurons of the primary protocerebral anterior (pPAM) cluster. Optogenetic activation of Kenyon cells paired with odor stimulation is sufficient to induce appetitive memory.

Connectomics: Arrested Development.

Connectomics, the reconstruction of neuronal wiring diagrams via electron microscopy, is bringing us closer to understanding how brains organize behavior. But high-resolution imaging of the brain can do more. A new study now provides insights into how neuronal circuits develop.

Drosophila melanogaster cloak their eggs with pheromones, which prevents cannibalism.

Oviparous animals across many taxa have evolved diverse strategies that deter egg predation, providing valuable tests of how natural selection mitigates direct fitness loss. Communal egg laying in nonsocial species minimizes egg predation. However, in cannibalistic species, this very behavior facilitates egg predation by conspecifics (cannibalism).

Connectomics and function of a memory network: the mushroom body of larval Drosophila.

The Drosophila larva is a relatively simple, 10 000-neuron study case for learning and memory with enticing analytical power, combining genetic tractability, the availability of robust behavioral assays, the opportunity for single-cell transgenic manipulation, and an emerging synaptic connectome of its complete central nervous system. Indeed, although the insect mushroom body is a much-studied memory network, the connectome revealed that more than half of the classes of connection within the mushroom body had escaped attention. The connectome also revealed circuitry that integrates, both within and across brain hemispheres, higher-order sensory input, intersecting valence signals, and output neurons that instruct behavior.

Maggot Instructor: Semi-Automated Analysis of Learning and Memory in Larvae.

For several decades, has been widely used as a suitable model organism to study the fundamental processes of associative olfactory learning and memory. More recently, this condition also became true for the larva, which has become a focus for learning and memory studies based on a number of technical advances in the field of anatomical, molecular, and neuronal analyses. The ongoing efforts should be mentioned to reconstruct the complete connectome of the larval brain featuring a total of about 10,000 neurons and the development of neurogenic tools that allow individual manipulation of each neuron.

Functional architecture of reward learning in mushroom body extrinsic neurons of larval Drosophila.

The brain adaptively integrates present sensory input, past experience, and options for future action. The insect mushroom body exemplifies how a central brain structure brings about such integration. Here we use a combination of systematic single-cell labeling, connectomics, transgenic silencing, and activation experiments to study the mushroom body at single-cell resolution, focusing on the behavioral architecture of its input and output neurons (MBINs and MBONs), and of the mushroom body intrinsic APL neuron.

larvalign: Aligning Gene Expression Patterns from the Larval Brain of Drosophila melanogaster.

The larval brain of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is a small, tractable model system for neuroscience. Genes for fluorescent marker proteins can be expressed in defined, spatially restricted neuron populations. Here, we introduce the methods for 1) generating a standard template of the larval central nervous system (CNS), 2) spatial mapping of expression patterns from different larvae into a reference space defined by the standard template.

A map of sensilla and neurons in the taste system of drosophila larvae.

In Drosophila melanogaster larvae, the prime site of external taste reception is the terminal organ (TO). Though investigation on the TO's implications in taste perception has been expanding rapidly, the sensilla of the TO have been essentially unexplored. In this study, we performed a systematic anatomical and molecular analysis of the TO.

Odor-taste learning in Drosophila larvae.

The Drosophila larva is an attractive model system to study fundamental questions in the field of neuroscience. Like the adult fly, the larva offers a seemingly unlimited genetic toolbox, which allows one to visualize, silence or activate neurons down to the single cell level. This, combined with its simplicity in terms of cell numbers, offers a useful system to study the neuronal correlates of complex processes including associative odor-taste learning and memory formation.