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Friday, 25 Mar, 2016
Stressed flies help us understand anxiety
Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent type of brain disorder, but few long-term treatments are available. In a recent study in the journal Current Biology, published on 24 March 2016, Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS) researchers show that studying anxiety using Drosophila (the common vinegar fly) may be one of the most efficient ways to analyse the genes and brain regions that regulate anxiety. Most scientists use either mice or rats to study anxiety.
The Duke-NUS team, led by Assistant Professor Adam Claridge-Chang, manipulated genes in the vinegar fly that are related to the genes thought to cause anxiety in humans and mice. They then tested the flies’ inclination to stay close to the walls of an enclosed chamber, a behaviour that has long been used to assess rodent anxiety. These experiments showed that the same genes that modulate anxiety in rodents also modulate wall following in vinegar flies. These results indicate that fly wall following is an anxiety-related behaviour. The team were also able to identify several new fly anxiety genes.
Being able to use vinegar flies to study anxiety provides five major benefits. Compared to mice, flies grow faster, are cheaper, have a smaller brain, offer a set of superior genetic tools and can be grown in large numbers. This last feature allows experiments with many more subjects, yielding more reliable results. Using flies to understand the basic mechanisms of anxiety can help guide future experiments in mice. A better fundamental understanding of anxiety would greatly increase the likelihood of finding new treatments for the anxiety disorders that affect so many people in Singapore and around the world.
Read the paper 'Ancient anxiety pathways influence Drosophila defense behaviors' here.
Please read the Cell Press release here.
Video by Duke-NUS Asst Prof Adam Claridge-Chang (https://youtu.be/uNaqwQfvPaw).
Find out more about the lab's work at http://www.claridgechang.net/ and follow Asst Prof Claridge-Chang on Twitter.