title: Putative transmembrane transporter modulates higher-level aggression inDrosophila.
abstract: By selection of winners of dyadic fights for 35 generations, we have generated a hyperaggressive Bully line of flies that almost always win fights against the parental wild-type Canton-S stock. Maintenance of the Bully phenotype is temperature dependent during development, with the phenotype lost when flies are reared at 19 °C. No similar effect is seen with the parent line. This difference allowed us to carry out RNA-seq experiments and identify a limited number of genes that are differentially expressed by twofold or greater in the Bullies; one of these was a putative transmembrane transporter,CG13646, which showed consistent and reproducible twofold down-regulation in Bullies. We examined the causal effect of this gene on the phenotype with a mutant line forCG13646, and with an RNAi approach. In all cases, reduction in expression ofCG13646by approximately half led to a hyperaggressive phenotype partially resembling that seen in the Bully flies. This gene is a member of a very interesting family of solute carrier proteins (SLCs), some of which have been suggested as being involved in glutamine/glutamate and GABA cycles of metabolism in excitatory and inhibitory nerve terminals in mammalian systems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115.
authors.forename: Budhaditya
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Chowdhury
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115.
authors.forename: Yick-Bun
authors.initials: YB
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115 edward_kravitz@hms.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Edward A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Kravitz
mesh_terms: D000374:Aggression; D026905:Amino Acid Transport Systems / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D000818:Animals; D029721:Drosophila Proteins / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D008297:Male; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D034741:RNA, Small Interfering / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D013696:Temperature
chemical_list: D026905:Amino Acid Transport Systems; D029721:Drosophila Proteins; D012333:RNA, Messenger; D034741:RNA, Small Interfering
keywords: Drosophila; aggression; transmembrane neutral amino acid transporter