Relatório Anual 2010 - Fundação Champalimaud

inactivate subsets of neurons in the adult flies only. We use this behavioralapproach and combine it with anatomical and functional dissectionof the circuit.In 2010 we have focused our research on the neurons that express apterous.Inactivation of apterous expressing neurons leads to a marked reduction ofreceptivity of the female to the male’s courtship efforts. It is unlikely that allneurons that express apterous are involved in female receptivity. We havebegun running experiments that allow us to zoom in on the apterous neuronsthat affect the behaviour of the female.Across species stress odor responseStressed Drosophila melanogaster release an aversive odorant that elicitsa robust avoidance response in test flies. Our data indicate that stress odoravoidance is not common to all Drosophilids. This behavioral differencebetween melanogaster and some of its sister-species provides a powerfulframework, amenable to genetic, developmental and anatomical dissection,to investigate how evolution has shaped distinct responses to an environmentalcue.T MazeIn the past year, we have characterised the response of four Drosophilids toCO2, the only identified active component of the Stress Odor. With this purposewe built a T-maze with odor flow to test flies to controlled concentrations ofCO2. We found that the responses vary across the tested species. We begancharacterizing the response of additional Drosophilids in order to understandthe full range of variation so that in the future we can find the anatomicaland genetic basis of the variation.We have also established a photoactivation protocol that allows visualisingall the neurons that innervate the V glomerulus that responds to CO2.We see the same number of cell bodies activated within different brains.Photoactivation is done in live brains so we can in the future characterisethe electrophysiological response of all the neurons that innervate the Vglomerulus.FC Relatório Anual 2010 36