A genetic screen for olfactory habituation mutations in Drosophila: analysis of novel foraging alleles and an underlying neural circuit.

ABSTRACT: Habituation is a form of non-associative learning that enables animals to reduce their reaction to repeated harmless stimuli. When exposed to ethanol vapor, Drosophila show an olfactory-mediated startle response characterized by a transient increase in locomotor activity. Upon repeated exposures, this olfactory startle attenuates with the characteristics of habituation. Here we describe the results of a genetic screen to identify olfactory startle habituation (OSH) mutants. One mutation is a transcript specific allele of foraging (for) encoding a cGMP-dependent kinase. We show this allele of for reduces expression of a for-T1 isoform expressed in the head and functions normally to inhibit OSH. We localize for-T1 function to a limited set of neurons that include olfactory receptor neurons (

SUBMITTER: Eddison M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3524188 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature