Social interactions synchronize the phase of circadian locomotor activity of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster

COSTA, C.; SORRENTINO, M.; BECKWITH, E.J.; PÍREZ, N.

Buenos Aires

Conferencia; Encuentro SAN 2022; 2022

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias

The interactions that individuals undergo with conspecifics are critical for theirwellbeing. In Drosophila melanogaster, the social context, defined as the size, sex andgenotype composition of the group affects aggression, sleep, feeding, alcoholconsumption and the daily pattern of locomotor activity. Specifically, the olfactorysystem plays a crucial role in the capacity of social cues to synchronize the internalcircadian clock. Therefore, the goal of this project is to dissect the mechanisms thatunderlie locomotor activity entrainment by social interactions. As a first step, wereplicated behavioral experiments and evaluated if social interactions were sufficient toentrain flies that were originally in different activity phases. We performed experimentsusing the wild-type strains Canton-S and w1118, which have different eye colors,entrained in light schedules 6 h apart. We individually recorded the activity of male andfemales flies for six days after a week of social interactions in groups of differentcompositions, always in free-running conditions. Preliminary results show that Canton-S flies that were 6 hours delayed were able to re-synchronize the w1118 population.Future experiments will include different light schedules and compositions of theinteracting populations. We will employ genetic tools to discover the nature of thesignal and its receptors in the olfactory system, and map the components of theolfactory system that contact the circadian pacemaker.