The female sex pheromone (Z)-4-undecenal mediates flight attraction and courtship in Drosophila melanogaster.

Specific mate communication and recognition underlies reproduction and hence speciation. Our study provides new insights in Drosophila melanogaster premating olfactory communication. Mate communication evolves during adaptation to ecological niches and makes use of social signals and habitat cues.

A Golden Age for Motor Skill Learning? Learning of an Unfamiliar Motor Task in 10-Year-Olds, Young Adults, and Adults, When Starting From Similar Baselines.

It is often argued within sports circles that the age span of around 6-12 years is a for motor skill learning, and this period is often described as sensitive, or even critical, for learning such skills. Consequently, skill development programmes target this age span for teaching technical and coordinative skills. In the scientific literature, however, the term is scarcely seen, and few studies have even attempted to test this hypothesis.

False positives from impurities result in incorrect functional characterization of receptors in chemosensory studies.

The discovery of chemoreceptors and technological advances have greatly increased our understanding of chemosensory mechanisms. However, some of this rapid progress may have been severely compromised by insufficient attention given to the possible effects of impurities in the chemical standards used in identifying ligands for target receptors. Here, we show that even trace amounts of impurities in test stimuli can completely obscure true ligand-receptor relationships.

A Drosophila female pheromone elicits species-specific long-range attraction via an olfactory channel with dual specificity for sex and food.

Background: Mate finding and recognition in animals evolves during niche adaptation and involves social signals and habitat cues. Drosophila melanogaster and related species are known to be attracted to fermenting fruit for feeding and egg-laying, which poses the question of whether species-specific fly odours contribute to long-range premating communication.

Results: We have discovered an olfactory channel in D.

The heparin-binding domains of IGFBP-2 mediate its inhibitory effect on preadipocyte differentiation and fat development in male mice.

IGF-binding protein (IGFBP)-2 overexpression confers resistance to high-fat feeding and inhibits the differentiation of preadipocytes in vitro. However, whether administration of IGFBP-2 can regulate adipogenesis in vivo and the domains that mediate this response have not been defined. IGFBP-2 contains 2 heparin-binding domains (HBD), which are localized in the linker region (HBD1) and C-terminal region (HBD2) of IGFBP-2.