Qiu Shuang, Xiao Chengfeng
Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Chemical Pollution Control and Resources Reuse, School of Environmental and Biological Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Xiao Ling Wei 200, Nanjing 210094, Jiangsu, China.
Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada.
Physiol Behav. 2018 May 1;188:227-238. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2018.02.023. Epub 2018 Feb 14.
The Drosophila melanogaster white-eyed w line serves as a parental stock, allowing genetic recombination of any gene of interest along with a readily recognizable marker. w flies display behavioral susceptibility to environmental stimulation such as light. It is of great importance to characterize the behavioral performance of w flies because this would provide a baseline from which the effect of the gene of interest could be differentiated. Little work has been performed to characterize the walking behavior in adult w flies. Here we show that pulsed light stimulation increased the regularity of walking trajectories of w flies in circular arenas. We statistically modeled the distribution of distances to center and extracted the walking structures of w flies. Pulsed light stimulation redistributed the time proportions for individual walking structures. Specifically, pulsed light stimulation reduced the episodes of crossing over the central region of the arena. An addition of four genomic copies of mini-white, a common marker gene for eye color, mimicked the effect of pulsed light stimulation in reducing crossing in a circular arena. The reducing effect of mini-white was copy-number-dependent. These findings highlight the rhythmic light stimulation-evoked modifications of walking behavior in w flies and an unexpected behavioral consequence of mini-white in transgenic flies carrying w isogenic background.
果蝇白眼w品系作为亲本种群，可使任何感兴趣的基因与易于识别的标记进行基因重组。w果蝇对光等环境刺激表现出行为易感性。表征w果蝇的行为表现非常重要，因为这将提供一个基线，据此可以区分感兴趣基因的作用。目前很少有研究对成年w果蝇的行走行为进行表征。在此我们表明，脉冲光刺激增加了w果蝇在圆形场地中行走轨迹的规律性。我们对到中心的距离分布进行了统计建模，并提取了w果蝇的行走结构。脉冲光刺激重新分配了各个行走结构的时间比例。具体而言，脉冲光刺激减少了穿过场地中心区域的次数。添加四个基因组拷贝的微型白眼基因（一种常见的眼色标记基因），在减少圆形场地中的交叉方面模拟了脉冲光刺激的效果。微型白眼基因的减少效果与拷贝数有关。这些发现突出了节律性光刺激诱发的w果蝇行走行为改变，以及在携带w同基因背景的转基因果蝇中微型白眼基因产生的意外行为后果。
