Genetic Toolkit Isolates Neuron Types in Drosophila Brain

The fruit fly brain is small enough to map in exquisite detail, but that does not mean its signaling systems are simple. A single neuromodulator can influence behaviors as varied as aggression, feeding, wakefulness, memory, and visual tracking, raising a central question for neuroscientists: how does one chemical messenger produce so many different effects?

Researchers at the Salk Institute have developed a genetic toolkit designed to answer that question one neuron type at a time. In a study published in Current Biology , the team reports a curated set of transgenic driver strains that provide selective access to nearly all long-range octopaminergic and tyraminergic neuron types in the brain of Drosophila melanogaster . The study is titled “ Cellular and functional dissection of the octopaminergic and tyraminergic system in the Drosophila brain .”