Project description:Social experience influences multiple behaviors of many animal species, including aggression. Social isolation often increases aggressiveness. To investigater the molecular basis of social influences on aggressiveness, we performed comparative gene expression profiling on heads from 6-day-old, single-housed, more aggressive and group-housed, less aggressive male flies. Keywords: social experience
Project description:To investigate gene expression changes in Drosophila head tissues during social isolation, we performed RNA-sequencing on fruit fly head samples obtained from male flies that have been group-reared for 7 days (Grp), isolated (single-housed) for 7 days (Iso7) and isolated (single-housed) for only 1 day (Iso1). Using differential gene expression analysis, we found a group of candidate genes that are specific to chronic social isolation: they exhibited significant gene expression change in both comparisons of “Grp vs Iso1” and “Iso1 vs Iso7”.
Project description:Gene expression levels were determined in 3rd instar and adult Drosophila melanogaster reared during spaceflight, to elucidate the genetic and molecular mechanisms underpinning the effects of microgravity on the immune system. The goal was to validate the Drosophila model for understanding alterations of innate immune responses in humans due to spaceflight. Five containers of flies, with ten female and five male fruit flies in each container, were housed and bred on the space shuttle (average orbit altitude of 330.35 km) for 12 days and 18.5 hours, with a new generation reared in microgravity. RNA was extracted on the day of shuttle landing from whole body animals (3rd instar larvae and adults), hybridized to Drosophila 2.0 Affymetrix genome arrays, and the expression level of all genes was normalized against the gene expression level from the corresponding developmental stage animals raised on ground. Spaceflight altered the expression of larval genes involved in the maturation of plasmatocytes (macrophages) and their phagocytic response, as well as the level of constitutive expression of pattern recognition receptors and opsonins that specifically recognize bacteria, and of lysozymes, antimicrobial peptide pathway and immune stress genes, hallmarks of humoral immunity.
Project description:To identify TF binding motifs with position-dependent functions associated with transcription initiation, we performed csRNA-seq to map initiating transcripts in Drosophila melanogaster embryos. We started with cell culturing and csRNA-seq for data acquisition. This was followed by a csRNA-seq bioinformatics analysis comparing TSS with more vs. less nascent transcription.
Project description:We generated 4 separate subpopulations of selected flies from 1 starting population of a mixture of Canton-S flies. Two of the populations (AggrI and AggrII) were selected for increased aggression by picking males from a population cage that engaged in the most intense fighting (known as escalation behavior). Thirty males were selected every generation (from a total of 120 males per cage) per line and mated with random virgin females from that same generation. Two control populations (NeutrI and NeutrII) were selected by picking random males from the population cage after 15-30 aggressive males were removed. After 21 generations of selection males from the Aggr lines were dramatically more aggressive than males from the Neutr lines. The Neutr lines did not significantly differ from the starting population although a trend of decreased aggression was visible. Experiment Overall Design: Four populations were analyzed. Two were selected for increased aggression and two were reference groups, selected for a decrease but with no significant effect.
Project description:Metabolites of cold hardy versus cold susceptible flies were compared using N less than R-based metabolomics. We used 8 replicates per line (2 hardy lines, two susceptible lines), and sampled each line at three time points (before, during and after cold), giving rise to 96 samples total.
