Mihalek, R. M., Jones, C. J., Tully, T. (January 1997) The Drosophila mutation turnip has pleiotropic behavioral effects and does not specifically affect learning. Learning and Memory, 3 (5). pp. 425-44. ISSN 1072-0502 (Print)
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Abstract
The Drosophila mutant turnip (tur) was isolated on the basis of its poor performance in an olfactory learning task, and also has a reduction in protein kinase C (PKC) activity. PKC has been found in the nervous systems of a wide range of organisms and appears to have an important role in learning and memory-related processes. Unfortunately, previous reports documenting the learning defect of tur lacked the controls required to assess the origins of the poor performance of the mutant. We have analyzed the effects of the tur mutation on both associative and nonassociative learning as well as on PKC activity. Additionally, the effects of the mutation on the task-relevant sensorimotor abilities of the flies were assessed. Although we were able to replicate previous behavioral and biochemical results obtained with tur, we discovered that the tur mutation also affected response to electric shock and caused a drastic reduction in the locomotor ability of the flies. Because locomotion is an essential component of the learning assays, this result makes it impossible to conclude that tur specifically affects learning and demonstrates the crucial importance of sensorimotor controls in conditioning experiments.
| Item Type: | Paper |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Animals Behavior, Animal/ physiology Chromosome Mapping Conditioning, Classical/physiology Darkness Drosophila melanogaster/ genetics/ physiology Electroshock Gene Deletion Habituation (Psychophysiology)/physiology Learning/ physiology Mutation/ physiology Protein Kinase C/metabolism Recombination, Genetic/physiology Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S. Smell/physiology |
| Subjects: | organism description > animal > insect > Drosophila organism description > animal behavior > habituation organism description > animal behavior > learning bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > DNA, RNA structure, function, modification > mutations bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > protein structure, function, modification > protein types > enzymes > kinase > Protein kinase C |
| CSHL Authors: | |
| Communities: | CSHL labs > Tully lab |
| Depositing User: | Kathleen Darby |
| Date: | January 1997 |
| Date Deposited: | 07 May 2014 15:54 |
| Last Modified: | 07 May 2014 15:54 |
| Related URLs: | |
| URI: | https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/30034 |
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