When one encounters a group of fruit flies invading their kitchen, it probably appears as if the whole group is vying for a sweet treat. But a closer look would likely reveal the male flies in the group are putting up more of a fight, particularly if ripe fruit or female flies are present. According to the latest studies from the fly laboratory of California Institute of Technology (Caltech) biologist David Anderson, male Drosophilae, commonly known as fruit flies, fight more than their female counterparts because they have special cells in their brains that promote fighting. These cells appear to be absent in the brains of female fruit flies.
"The sex-specific cells that we identified exert their effects on fighting by releasing a particular type of neuropeptide, or hormone, that has also been implicated in aggression in mammals including mouse and rat," says Anderson, the Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology at Caltech, and corresponding author of the study. "In addition, there are some recent papers implicating increased levels of this hormone in people with personality disorders that lead to higher levels of aggression."
The team's findings are outlined in the January 16 version of the journal Cell.
At first glance, a fruit fly may seem nothing like a human being. But look much closer, at a genetic level, and you will find that many of the genes seen in these flies are also present—and play similar roles—in humans. However, while such conservation holds for genes involved in basic cellular functions and in development, whether it was also true for genes controlling complex social behaviors like aggression was far from clear.
"Our studies are the first, to our knowledge, to identify a gene that plays a conserved role in aggression all the way from flies to humans," explains Anderson, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. If that is true for one such gene, it is also is likely true for others, Anderson says. "Our study validates using fruit flies as a model to discover new genes that may also control aggression in humans."
The less-complex nervous system of the fruit fly makes them easier to study than people or even mice, another genetic model organism. For this particular study, the research team created a small library consisting of different fly lines; in each line, a different set of specific neurons was genetically labeled and could be artificially activated, with each neuron type secreting a different neuropeptide. Forty such lines were tested for their ability to increase aggression when their labeled neurons were activated. The one that produced the most dramatic increase in aggression had neurons expressing a particular neuropeptide called tachykinin, or Tk.