Mery, Frederic Belay, Amsale T. So, Anthony K.-C. Sokolowski, Marla B. Kawecki, Tadeusz J. 2007-07-19 Knowing which genes contribute to natural variation in learning and memory would help us understand how differences in these cognitive traits evolve among populations and species. We show that a natural polymorphism at the <i>foraging</i> (<i>for</i>) locus, which encodes a cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG), affects associative olfactory learning in <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i>. In an assay that tests the ability to associate an odor with mechanical shock, flies homozygous for one natural allelic variant of this gene (<i>for^R</i>) showed better short-term but poorer long-term memory than flies homozygous for another natural allele (<i>for^s</i>). The <i>for^s</i> allele is characterized by reduced PKG activity. We showed that <i>for^R</i>-like levels of both short-term learning and long-term memory can be induced in <i>for^s</i> flies by selectively increasing the level of PKG in the mushroom bodies, which are centers of olfactory learning in the fly brain. Thus, the natural polymorphism at <i>for</i> may mediate an evolutionary tradeoff between short- and long-term memory. The respective strengths of learning performance of the two genotypes seem coadapted with their effects on foraging behavior: <i>for^R</i> flies move more between food patches and so could particularly benefit from fast learning, whereas <i>for^s</i> flies are more sedentary, which should favor good long-term memory. application/pdf https://folia.unifr.ch/global/documents/300312 https://folia.unifr.ch/documents/300312/files/kawecki_npa.pdf eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1073/pnas.0702923104 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess License undefined Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - 2007, vol. 104, no. 32, p. 13051-13055 behavior evolution genetics rover-sitter cGMP-dependent protein kinase info:eu-repo/classification/udc/57 Natural polymorphism affecting learning and memory in Drosophila http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501