I am still testing different GAL4s in order to find out the dopamine clusters involved in photopreference shift. Here are some new results.

Here I present new data on the GAL4s I have been testing. I also retested some previous ones. I had troubles with the shiTS/+ control, so the N has not chance since the last time.

I am currently testing different dopaminergic GAL4s in order to validate previous results from my initial screening. Here I can find the results for one of those GAL4s

I recently combined the two TbH-lexA  lines (54954 & 54075) with CD8GFP, and the TDC2-GAL4 line with CD8RFP, in order to compare their expression patterns. Here I present some of the dissections. The confocal is not working properly, but it is relatively good to draw some conclusions.

TDC2>GFP and anti-TβH (Scholz’s Lab)

TDC2>GFP (Gerber’s Lab)

anti-TDC2 (Goodwin’s Lab)

After refining my DA screening, I end up having three interesting GAL4s which lead to changes in photopreference after expressing Shibire and rising the temperature. What I am trying to do now is to understand if they label the same neuronal population or not.

I have been doing crosses in order to establish different lines that will allow me to study the neurons behind the photopreference shift. Here I show the first dissections I did to test some of these lines.

Dopaminergic clusters (Left: posterior, Right: anterior)

My dissections

TH-C’ from the original publication (Top: anterior, Bottom: posterior)

A few months ago I finished my first screen for DA-neuronal populations relevant in the photopreference shift. I tried a small collection of TH-Gal4s with interesting results that you could see here. To validate those results, I am currently searching for other Gal4s labeling the same groups of neurons. Here you can see the outcome of the first experiments for one of those lines.

Trying to define subsets of neurons related to the photopreference shift, I started to test the different OA and DA drivers available. Here you can see two OA-GAL4s used in Burke et al 2012:

My results:

The following plot shows the photopreference of two LexA lines presumably labeling TbH neurons. Only wing-clipped flies are shown.

26-09-2016, new experiments added.