stressor: heat (37°C; 6min)

POS_CTRL: control group

Gr28bd+TrpA1(heat): experimental group

10 flies completed out of 36 flies.

Optomotor traces (right/left) at start of experiment

Optomotor traces (right/left) at end of experiment

Performance Index bar plot with SEM:

Performance Index bar plot – preference subtracted:

Performance Index box&dotplot without notches:

Statistical tests of single groups against zero

For the stressor ‘cold’ the flies were kept on 18°C for 48h on ATR.

stressor: cold (18°C for 48h)

POS_CTRL: control group

Gr28bd+TrpA1(cold): experimental group

For the stressor ‘crowding’ ca. 60-65 flies were kept in one vial for 48h on ATR.

The effect of crowding was created by the volume of air available to the flies in the vial. This was altered via change in the height of the cotton plug in the vial. The control group had the cotton plug at the usual height of ca. 60mm above the food in the vial and the experimental group only 20mm.

stressor: crowding (maintained in smaller volume for 48h on ATR)

POS_CTRL: control group

Gr28bd+TrpA1(Crow): experimental group

The experimental group was kept in single vials on a ATR+Sucrose mixture for 48h.

stressor: social isolation

Pos_CTRL: control group

Gr28bd+TrpA1(Iso): experimental group

On Wednesday I tested the “heatshock” group, using light (with the same intensity as the aversive stimulus in the joystick experiment: ~800lux) for 5 minutes before testing, to stress the flies.

Stressor: heat (5min; 7.4V; ~800lux)

Gr28bd+TrpA1(Co): control group

Gr28bd+TrpA1: experimental group

 
On Friday I tested flies who were maintained in a cold environment (18°C) during the ATR treatment (2 days).

Stressor: cold (18°C; 48h)

Gr28bd+TrpA1(Co): Control group

Gr28bd+TrpA1: Experimental group

Flies 48 hours on RU486 wetted tissue

Flies 48 hours on RU486 wetted instant_food

Mean OMRs at start

Last week I started to test CsChrimson (NorpA, 20xUAS-Chrimson) flies with the joystick set up, to reproduce Daniels’ data on the positive control and to get used to the experimental set up.

There is a noticeable improvement (from my end) from the first two days of testing to the last two days.

These are the results of the first four days of testing. All in all, the positive control shows good avoidance. Althoug, there is a remarkable change in the error bars starting with the fifth period. Maybe due to exhaustion or any other effect that I don’t know of yet.

I replicated the analysis of the single-cell RNA-sequencing data of the ventral nerve cord from Allen et al., (2020)

tSNE cluster map

rut, rad, VGlut, FoxP expression in clusters:

Aaron M Allen Megan C Neville Sebastian Birtles Vincent Croset Christoph Daniel Treiber Scott Waddell Stephen F Goodwin 
(2020) A single-cell transcriptomic atlas of the adult Drosophila ventral nerve cord
eLife 9:e54074.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.54074