An assay for social interaction in Drosophila fragile X mutants

Bolduc, F. V., Valente, D., Nguyen, A. T., Mitra, P. P., Tully, T. (July 2010) An assay for social interaction in Drosophila fragile X mutants. Fly (Austin), 4 (3). ISSN 1933-6942 (Electronic) 1933-6934 (Linking)

URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20519966
DOI: 10.4161/fly.4.3.12280

Abstract

We developed a novel assay to examine social interactions in Drosophila and, as a first attempt, apply it here at examining the behavior of Drosophila Fragile X Mental Retardation gene (dfmr1) mutants. Fragile X syndrome is the most common cause of single gene intellectual disability (ID) and is frequently associated with autism. Our results suggest that dfmr1 mutants are less active than wild-type flies and interact with each other less often. In addition, mutants for one allele of dfmr1, dfmr1(B55), are more likely to come in close contact with a wild-type fly than another dfmr1(B55) mutant. Our results raise the possibility of defective social expression with preserved receptive abilities. We further suggest that the assay may be applied in a general strategy of examining endophenoypes of complex human neurological disorders in Drosophila, and specifically in order to understand the genetic basis of social interaction defects linked with ID.

Item Type: Paper
Subjects: diseases & disorders > congenital hereditary genetic diseases
bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > Mapping and Rendering > DNA Structure Rendering
organism description > animal > insect > Drosophila
diseases & disorders > mental disorders > personality disorders > autism
bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > DNA, RNA structure, function, modification > mutations
CSHL Authors:
Communities: CSHL labs > Mitra lab
CSHL labs > Tully lab
School of Biological Sciences > Publications
Depositing User: CSHL Librarian
Date: 5 July 2010
Date Deposited: 27 Sep 2011 14:28
Last Modified: 22 Sep 2014 19:03
PMCID: PMC3103635
Related URLs:
URI: https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/15367

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