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posted by janrinok on Friday August 09 2019, @02:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the help-from-a-fruit-fly dept.

Fruit flies could one day provide new avenues to discover additional genes that contribute to a person's ability to learn and remember. Scientists at the University of Missouri are studying genes of fruit flies to explore why an individual fly can be a better learner than another. Many of those genes in fruit flies are similar to those found in people.

Past experiments studying how fruit flies' ability to learn and remember have involved "turning off" a single gene and watching the response. In this study, the scientists took a different approach by placing fruit flies in a box equipped with heating elements. [...] A fly's ability to avoid the heat measured how well it learned, and a fly's ability to avoid the hotter side of the box, even when the heat was off, measured its capacity to remember.

Patricka Williams-Simon [said] "We repeated the experiment with over 40,000 individual fruit flies from over 700 different genes to establish variation in performance. Then, we focused on the high and the low learning and memory performers." The scientists then took these results and applied genetic sequencing technology to determine if specific genes were responsible for these observed changes in a fly's behavior. They found nine genes that show a change between high and low performing files when it comes to learning and memory.

"All of these genes are previously known to affect the nervous system or the brain in some way, but none of them had previously been implicated in learning and memory," said Elizabeth King, an assistant professor of biological sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science. "Therefore, they represent novel areas to further investigate these behavioral traits."

While the study is considered basic research, Williams-Simon said their findings are important. "The better we can understand these traits in fruit flies, the more we can develop targeted studies in humans," Williams-Simon said.


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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday August 09 2019, @07:44PM (1 child)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 09 2019, @07:44PM (#878006) Journal

    it is a universal adapter protein as it is used by almost all TLRs (except TLR 3) to activate the transcription factor NF-κB.

    In mice. That quote from wikipedia very specifically says "in that species, [the part you excerpted]"

    But either way, I'm probably wrong about it and I'll say you're right, but fight to the death for fucking keratin not affecting neural behavior(unless you count keeping your head warm).

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @08:08PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @08:08PM (#878014)

    In mice, that is a ridiculous criticism? You'll find very little genetic evidence that isn't from some animal besides humans...

    And I have no idea why you would think a gene important for the epidermis would not also play a role in nervous tissue. They are derived from the same embryonic tissue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroepithelial_cell [wikipedia.org]

    Also:

    Transient expression of keratin during neuronal development in the adult rabbit spinal ganglion.
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19629632 [nih.gov]

    Monoclonal antibody analysis of keratin expression in the central nervous system
    https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b35c/be8228236c3cd9469769e0434ceb2036a8e0.pdf [semanticscholar.org]

    Keratin 13 expression reprograms bone and brain metastases of human prostate cancer cells
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5356688/ [nih.gov]

    Rationalising the role of Keratin 9 as a biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease
    https://www.nature.com/articles/srep22962 [nature.com]

    Keratin 8 of simple epithelia is expressed in glia of the goldfish nervous system
    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1432-0436.1990.tb00614.x [wiley.com]