The etiopathogenesis of depression may involve repeated exposure to several unpredictable stressors. This study was conducted to investigate changes induced by chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) and to assess behavioral and neurochemical changes that predict depressive-like behavior in Drosophila melanogaster. Male Drosophila melanogaster flies were exposed to CUMS with several stressors (cold, heat, starvation, and sleep deprivation) in an unpredictable and chronic manner for ten days. At the end of treatment, in vivo behavioral tests (open field, aggression, forced swimming, mating, light/dark box, male fertility evaluation, sucrose preference, weight evaluation) and ex vivo analyses (dopamine and serotonin levels) were performed. Using this CUMS model, we obtained results that contribute to the construction of a depressive model in Drosophila, where we reproduce some behavioral phenotypes corresponding to depressive symptoms, such as immobility in the forced swimming test, less exploration in the light/dark test, changes in mating behavior, changes in the aggressiveness test, reduced sucrose preference, and weight-loss, in addition to a significant reduction in the levels of serotonin and dopamine when compared to the control group. Fluoxetine was used in our study as a positive control to demonstrate that CUMS-induced depressive-like behaviors in flies can be reversed by antidepressants. In conclusion, male Drosophila melanogaster exposed to CUMS display a depressive-like phenotype, and, while this poses some limitations as an animal model for depression, it meets some of the criteria required to be a valid model, such as good face and construct validity.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2018.05.016 | DOI Listing |
G3 (Bethesda)
January 2025
School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.
As part of an ongoing effort to generate comprehensive resources for the experimental analysis of fourth chromosome genes in Drosophila melanogaster, the Fourth Chromosome Resource Project has used CRISPR mutagenesis with single guide RNAs to isolate mutations in 62 of the 80 fourth chromosome, protein-coding genes. These mutations were induced on a fourth chromosome bearing a basal FRT insertion to facilitate experimental approaches involving FLP recombinase-induced mitotic recombination. To permit straightforward comparisons among mutant stocks, most of the mutations were generated on isogenic fourth chromosomes, which were then crossed into a common genetic background.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: The use of microcomputed tomography (Micro-CT) for imaging biological samples has burgeoned in the past decade, due to increased access to scanning platforms, ease of operation, isotropic three-dimensional image information, and the ability to derive accurate quantitative data. However, manual data analysis of Micro-CT images can be laborious and time intensive. Deep learning offers the ability to streamline this process, but historically has included caveats-namely, the need for a large amount of training data, which is often limited in many Micro-CT studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGut microbiota are fundamental for healthy animal function, but the evidence that host function can be predicted from microbiota taxonomy remains equivocal, and natural populations remain understudied compared to laboratory animals. Paired analyses of covariation in microbiota and host parameters are powerful approaches to characterise host-microbiome relationships mechanistically, especially in wild populations of animals that are also lab models, enabling insight into the ecological basis of host function at molecular and cellular levels. The fruitfly is a preeminent model organism, amenable to field investigation by 'omic analyses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Exp Biol
January 2025
Department of Entomology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
Bacterial infections can substantially impact host metabolic health as a result of the direct and indirect demands of sustaining an immune response and of nutrient piracy by the pathogen itself. Drosophila melanogaster and other insects that survive a sublethal bacterial infection often carry substantial pathogen burdens for the remainder of life. In this study, we asked whether these chronic infections exact metabolic costs for the host, and how these costs scale with the severity of chronic infection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
January 2025
The Department of Urology, Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200233, China.
Balanced self-renewal and differentiation of stem cells are crucial for maintaining tissue homeostasis, but the underlying mechanisms of this process remain poorly understood. Here, from an RNA interference (RNAi) screen in adult Drosophila intestinal stem cells (ISCs), we identify a factor, Pax, which is orthologous to mammalian PXN, coordinates the proliferation and differentiation of ISCs during both normal homeostasis and injury-induced midgut regeneration in Drosophila. Loss of Pax promotes ISC proliferation while suppressing its differentiation into absorptive enterocytes (ECs).
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