Identification and genetic analysis of a pervasive 'needle-eye' sperm phenotype in sterile hybrid males.

Interspecies hybrid sterility has been extensively studied, especially in the genus . Hybrid sterility is more often found in the heterogametic (XY or ZW) sex, a trend called Haldane's rule. Although this phenomenon is pervasive, identification of a common genetic mechanism remains elusive, with modest support found for a range of potential theories.

Social experience and pheromone receptor activity reprogram gene expression in sensory neurons.

Social experience and pheromone signaling in olfactory neurons affect neuronal responses and male courtship behaviors in Drosophila. We previously showed that social experience and pheromone signaling modulate chromatin around behavioral switch gene fruitless, which encodes a transcription factor necessary and sufficient for male sexual behaviors. Fruitless drives social experience-dependent modulation of courtship behaviors and physiological sensory neuron responses to pheromone; however, the molecular mechanisms underlying this modulation of neural responses remain less clear.

Natural variation in sugar tolerance associates with changes in signaling and mitochondrial ribosome biogenesis.

How dietary selection affects genome evolution to define the optimal range of nutrient intake is a poorly understood question with medical relevance. We have addressed this question by analyzing and , recently diverged species with differential diet choice. larvae, specialized to a nutrient scarce diet, did not survive on sugar-rich conditions, while the generalist species was sugar tolerant.

Patterns of transcriptional parallelism and variation in the developing olfactory system of Drosophila species.

Organisms have evolved strikingly parallel phenotypes in response to similar selection pressures suggesting that there may be shared constraints limiting the possible evolutionary trajectories. For example, the behavioral adaptation of specialist Drosophila species to specific host plants can exhibit parallel changes in their adult olfactory neuroanatomy. We investigated the genetic basis of these parallel changes by comparing gene expression during the development of the olfactory system of two specialist Drosophila species to that of four other generalist species.

Transcriptional profiling of olfactory system development identifies distal antenna as a regulator of subset of neuronal fates.

Drosophila uses 50 different olfactory receptor neuron (ORN) classes that are clustered within distinct sensilla subtypes to decipher their chemical environment. Each sensilla subtype houses 1-4 ORN identities that arise through asymmetric divisions of a single sensory organ precursor (SOP). Despite a number of mutational studies investigating the regulation of ORN development, a majority of the transcriptional programs that lead to the different ORN classes in the developing olfactory system are unknown.