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 figure depict the PI for flies tested in a Benzer CC paradigm, and the PI for the subgroups generated at the end of the first test in a re-test. Additionally, I calculated the PI expected for flies in groups 5-4 (green) and 3-0 (yellow) if they would choose the same tubes in the re-test.

Since SfN is around the corner, I am preparing the figures for my poster. This year the title is “Do flies in groups make individual choices?”, and contains the work that was done by Isabelle during her Bachelor thesis.

I redesigned the figures, and here are the most important ones.

Amount of flies in T-Maze and how it affects flies’ choices/distribution in tubes:

Subgroups obtained after testing an initial population in the T-Maze:

3h later

24h later

Amount of flies in Benzer’s paradigm and how it affects flies’ choices/distribution in tubes:

Subgroups obtained after testing an initial population in Benzer’s paradigm:

3h later

24h later

All Benzer subgroups (unfinished figure):

As part of the answers to the reviewers for our paper (previous pre-print version here), I decided to test some CyO flies in the T-Maze. Here I present the results for an N of 5 experiments. The CyO balancer that I used was balancing the lethal insertion of a tsh-Gal80 construct. Therefore, as a control I tested the tsh-Gal80/+ siblings of the CyO/+ flies obtained after crossing tsh-Gal80/CyO with WTB.