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Journal article

Natural polymorphism affecting learning and memory in Drosophila

  • Mery, Frederic Department of Biology, University of Fribourg, Switzerland - Laboratory for Evolution, Genome and Speciation, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Gif sur Yvette, France
  • Belay, Amsale T. Department of Biology, University of Toronto, Canada
  • So, Anthony K.-C. Department of Biology, University of Toronto, Canada
  • Sokolowski, Marla B. Department of Biology, University of Toronto, Canada
  • Kawecki, Tadeusz J. Department of Biology, University of Fribourg, Switzerland - Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
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    19.07.2007
Published in:
  • 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
English 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 foraging (for) locus, which encodes a cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG), affects associative olfactory learning in Drosophila melanogaster. In an assay that tests the ability to associate an odor with mechanical shock, flies homozygous for one natural allelic variant of this gene (forR) showed better short-term but poorer long-term memory than flies homozygous for another natural allele (fors). The fors allele is characterized by reduced PKG activity. We showed that forR-like levels of both short-term learning and long-term memory can be induced in fors 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 for 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: forR flies move more between food patches and so could particularly benefit from fast learning, whereas fors flies are more sedentary, which should favor good long-term memory.
Faculty
Faculté des sciences et de médecine
Department
Département de Biologie
Language
  • English
Classification
Biological sciences
License
License undefined
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/300312
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