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3 Janelia Publications

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    05/30/10 | A wireless neural/EMG telemetry system for freely moving insects.
    Reid R. Harrison , Ryan J. Kier , Anthony Leonardo , Haleh Fotowat , Raymond Chan , Fabrizio Gabbiani
    IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems. 2010 May 30:. doi: 10.1109/ISCAS.2010.5538034

    We have developed a miniature telemetry system that captures neural, EMG, and acceleration signals from a freely moving insect and transmits the data wirelessly to a remote digital receiver. The system is based on a custom low-power integrated circuit that amplifies and digitizes four biopotential signals as well as three acceleration signals from an off-chip MEMS accelerometer, and transmits this information over a wireless 920-MHz telemetry link. The unit weighs 0.79 g and runs for two hours on two small batteries. We have used this system to monitor neural and EMG signals in jumping and flying locusts.

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    Simpson Lab
    05/01/10 | Mutation of the Drosophila vesicular GABA transporter disrupts visual figure detection.
    Fei H, Chow DM, Chen A, Romero-Calderón R, Ong WS, Ackerson LC, Maidment NT, Simpson JH, Frye MA, Krantz DE
    The Journal of Experimental Biology. 2010 May;213(Pt 10):1717-30. doi: 10.1242/jeb.036053

    The role of gamma amino butyric acid (GABA) release and inhibitory neurotransmission in regulating most behaviors remains unclear. The vesicular GABA transporter (VGAT) is required for the storage of GABA in synaptic vesicles and provides a potentially useful probe for inhibitory circuits. However, specific pharmacologic agents for VGAT are not available, and VGAT knockout mice are embryonically lethal, thus precluding behavioral studies. We have identified the Drosophila ortholog of the vesicular GABA transporter gene (which we refer to as dVGAT), immunocytologically mapped dVGAT protein expression in the larva and adult and characterized a dVGAT(minos) mutant allele. dVGAT is embryonically lethal and we do not detect residual dVGAT expression, suggesting that it is either a strong hypomorph or a null. To investigate the function of VGAT and GABA signaling in adult visual flight behavior, we have selectively rescued the dVGAT mutant during development. We show that reduced GABA release does not compromise the active optomotor control of wide-field pattern motion. Conversely, reduced dVGAT expression disrupts normal object tracking and figure-ground discrimination. These results demonstrate that visual behaviors are segregated by the level of GABA signaling in flies, and more generally establish dVGAT as a model to study the contribution of GABA release to other complex behaviors.

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    Baker Lab
    05/01/10 | Sex and the single cell. II. There is a time and place for sex.
    Robinett CC, Vaughan AG, Knapp J, Baker BS
    PLoS Biology. 2010 May;8(5):e1000365. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000365

    The Drosophila melanogaster sex hierarchy controls sexual differentiation of somatic cells via the activities of the terminal genes in the hierarchy, doublesex (dsx) and fruitless (fru). We have targeted an insertion of GAL4 into the dsx gene, allowing us to visualize dsx-expressing cells in both sexes. Developmentally and as adults, we find that both XX and XY individuals are fine mosaics of cells and tissues that express dsx and/or fruitless (fru(M)), and hence have the potential to sexually differentiate, and those that don’t. Evolutionary considerations suggest such a mosaic expression of sexuality is likely to be a property of other animal species having two sexes. These results have also led to a major revision of our view of how sex-specific functions are regulated by the sex hierarchy in flies. Rather than there being a single regulatory event that governs the activities of all downstream sex determination regulatory genes-turning on Sex lethal (Sxl) RNA splicing activity in females while leaving it turned off in males-there are, in addition, elaborate temporal and spatial transcriptional controls on the expression of the terminal regulatory genes, dsx and fru. Thus tissue-specific aspects of sexual development are jointly specified by post-transcriptional control by Sxl and by the transcriptional controls of dsx and fru expression.

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