TY  - JOUR
A1  - Selkrig, Joel
A1  - Mohammad, Farhan
A1  - Ng, Soon Hwee
A1  - Chua, Jia Yi
A1  - Tumkaya, Tayfun
A1  - Ho, Joses
A1  - Chiang, Yin Ning
A1  - Rieger, Dirk
A1  - Pettersson, Sven
A1  - Helfrich-Förster, Charlotte
A1  - Yew, Joanne Y.
A1  - Claridge-Chang, Adam
T1  - The Drosophila microbiome has a limited influence on sleep, activity, and courtship behaviors
JF  - Scientific Reports
N2  - In animals, commensal microbes modulate various physiological functions, including behavior. While microbiota exposure is required for normal behavior in mammals, it is not known how widely this dependency is present in other animal species. We proposed the hypothesis that the microbiome has a major influence on the behavior of the vinegar fly (Drosophila melanogaster), a major invertebrate model organism. Several assays were used to test the contribution of the microbiome on some well-characterized behaviors: defensive behavior, sleep, locomotion, and courtship in microbe-bearing, control flies and two generations of germ-free animals. None of the behaviors were largely influenced by the absence of a microbiome, and the small or moderate effects were not generalizable between replicates and/or generations. These results refute the hypothesis, indicating that the Drosophila microbiome does not have a major influence over several behaviors fundamental to the animal’s survival and reproduction. The impact of commensal microbes on animal behaviour may not be broadly conserved.
KW  - behavioural ecology
KW  - sleep
Y1  - 2018
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-235891
VL  - 8
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schlichting, Matthias
A1  - Rieger, Dirk
A1  - Cusumano, Paola
A1  - Grebler, Rudi
A1  - Costa, Rodolfo
A1  - Mazzotta, Gabriella M.
A1  - Helfrich-Förster, Charlotte
T1  - Cryptochrome interacts with actin and enhances eye-mediated light sensitivity of the circadian clock in Drosophila melanogaster
JF  - Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience
N2  - Cryptochromes (CRYs) are a class of flavoproteins that sense blue light. In animals, CRYs are expressed in the eyes and in the clock neurons that control sleep/wake cycles and are implied in the generation and/or entrainment of circadian rhythmicity. Moreover, CRYs are sensing magnetic fields in insects as well as in humans. Here, we show that in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster CRY plays a light-independent role as “assembling” protein in the rhabdomeres of the compound eyes. CRY interacts with actin and appears to increase light sensitivity of the eyes by keeping the “signalplex” of the phototransduction cascade close to the membrane. By this way, CRY also enhances light-responses of the circadian clock.
KW  - Drosophila melanogaster
KW  - cryptochrome
KW  - F-actin
KW  - phototransduction
KW  - activity rhythms
Y1  - 2018
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-177086
VL  - 11
IS  - 238
ER  -