Quantifying and predicting Drosophila larvae crawling phenotypes.
The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is a widely used model for cell biology, development, disease, and neuroscience. The fly's power as a genetic model for disease and neuroscience can be augmented by a quantitative description of its behavior. Here we show that we can accurately account for the complex and unique crawling patterns exhibited by individual Drosophila larvae using a small set of four parameters obtained from the trajectories of a few crawling larvae. The values of these parameters change for larvae from different genetic mutants, as we demonstrate for fly models of Alzheimer's disease and the Fragile X syndrome, allowing applications such as genetic or drug screens. Using the quantitative model of larval crawling developed here we use the mutant-specific parameters to robustly simulate larval crawling, which allows estimating the feasibility of laborious experimental assays and aids in their design.
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics and Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Maximilian N
MN
Günther
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics and Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Guilherme
G
Nettesheim
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics and Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.|New York University Abu Dhabi, P. O. Box 129188, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
George T
GT
Shubeita
D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000473:pathology; D000818:Animals; D001699:Biometry / Q000379:methods*; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000502:physiology*; D004353:Drug Evaluation, Preclinical / Q000379:methods; D004772:Entomology / Q000379:methods*; D005600:Fragile X Syndrome / Q000473:pathology; D005820:Genetic Testing / Q000379:methods; D007814:Larva / Q000502:physiology; D008124:Locomotion; D010641:Phenotype