PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

How fruit flies detect sweet foods

UC Riverside research opens door for investigations into taste receptors of mosquitoes and other deadly insects

2014-01-14
(Press-News.org) Contact information: Iqbal Pittalwala
iqbal@ucr.edu
951-827-6050
University of California - Riverside
How fruit flies detect sweet foods UC Riverside research opens door for investigations into taste receptors of mosquitoes and other deadly insects

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Insects represent remarkable diversity and have adapted to all sorts of ecological nooks and crannies. For example, they have taste receptors — novel proteins — with which they taste chemicals and make important choices about not only foods but also mates and where to deposit their eggs. These receptors are widely seen as being at the leading edge of behavioral adaptations.

Now, using the common fruit fly, researchers at the University of California, Riverside have performed a study that describes just how the fly's taste receptors detect sweet compounds.

"Sweet taste serves as an indicator of nutritive value, and the fly, like many other animals, has quite a sweet tooth," said Anupama Dahanukar, an assistant professor of entomology who led the research project.

The fly is a powerful model organism for studying animal development and behavior. Understanding the mechanisms by which it tastes and ingests sweet substances may offer tools to control insect feeding. The proteins that detect sweet compounds in insects belong, however, to a novel family of receptors that are quite different from the ones found in mammals. Even though these insect receptors were discovered more than a decade ago, how they recognize diverse chemicals remained an enigma and an unmet challenge — until now.

The study, which appears online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, holds promise for uncovering functions of taste receptors in insects that transmit diseases (for example, mosquitoes) or damage crops (for example, beetles and weevils).

The fruit fly has eight sweet taste receptors, and what each one does specifically hasn't been clear. To their surprise, the researchers found that each of the eight receptors confers sensitivity to one or more of the sweet substances they tested in the lab. Their systematic analysis showed that the receptors could be separated into two groups based on which compounds they detect and how closely related they are in sequence.

"Each receptor is likely to make a direct and independent contribution to the overall response spectrum of sweet taste neurons, which could have some important implications in terms of developing strategies to block these receptors," Dahanukar said.

Her research team used a Drosophila olfactory neuron as a host for expressing taste receptors. This particular neuron is unique because, although it is linked to smell, it expresses members of the taste receptor family.

"We expressed sweet taste receptors, one by one, in this neuron, and we found that the host neuron, which normally does not respond to sugars, was now capable of being activated by sweet substances," Dahanukar said.

"One would expect that swapping taste receptors between different taste neurons would be sound strategies, but those have been tried and failed," said Erica Gene Freeman, a bioengineering graduate student working in Dahanukar's lab and the first author of the research paper.

Moving next to mosquitoes, the researchers were able to express a taste receptor from the malaria vector mosquito, Anopheles gambiae, in the fly olfactory neuron.

Despite the evolutionary divergence between mosquitoes and flies, the mosquito taste receptor was functional in the fly neuron in the absence of any other mosquito factors.

"This gives us the impetus for investigating other taste receptors from insects such as mosquitoes that transmit diseases, as well as pests that feed on crops," Dahanukar said. "One important goal is to see if we can use this system to find compounds that can modify feeding behaviors of harmful insects in a targeted manner."

Although the researchers' method is laborious, it is the only technique with which many different taste receptors have been successfully expressed. It offers a platform to probe the specificity of individual taste receptors, potentially from a variety of insects.



INFORMATION:

Dahanukar and Freeman were joined in the research by Zev Wisotsky, a neuroscience graduate student who also works in Dahanukar's lab.

The research was supported by a National Science Foundation Integrated Graduate Research and Training Program in Video Bioinformatics Fellowship and a National Institutes of Health Predoctoral Award to Freeman; and a Whitehall Foundation Grant and a grant from the National Institutes of Health to Dahanukar.

The University of California, Riverside is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment has exceeded 21,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual statewide economic impact of more than $1 billion. A broadcast studio with fiber cable to the AT&T Hollywood hub is available for live or taped interviews. UCR also has ISDN for radio interviews. To learn more, call (951) UCR-NEWS.



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Microbes buy low and sell high

2014-01-14
Microbes buy low and sell high Microbes set up their own markets, comparing bids for commodities, hoarding to obtain a better price, and generally behaving in ways more commonly associated with Wall Street than the microscopic world The idea that people make ...

New test could simplify the diagnosis of coeliac disease

2014-01-14
New test could simplify the diagnosis of coeliac disease A new blood test being developed by Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researchers can rapidly and accurately diagnose coeliac disease without the need for prolonged gluten exposure. Dr Jason Tye-Din, ...

More to biofuel production than yield

2014-01-14
More to biofuel production than yield EAST LANSING, Mich. — When it comes to biofuels, corn leads the all-important category of biomass yield. However, focusing solely on yield comes at a high price. In the current issue of the Proceedings for the National ...

How the immune system fights off malaria

2014-01-14
How the immune system fights off malaria CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The parasites that cause malaria are exquisitely adapted to the various hosts they infect — so studying the disease in mice doesn't necessarily reveal information that could lead to drugs effective ...

Americans with and without children at home report similar life satisfaction but more positive and negative emotions

2014-01-14
Americans with and without children at home report similar life satisfaction but more positive and negative emotions PRINCETON, N.J.—Americans aged 34 to 46 with children at home rate their life satisfaction ...

Weighing particles at the attogram scale

2014-01-14
Weighing particles at the attogram scale CAMBRIDGE, MA -- MIT engineers have devised a way to measure the mass of particles with a resolution better than an attogram — one millionth of a trillionth of a gram. Weighing these tiny particles, including both ...

Transcendental experiences during meditation

2014-01-14
Transcendental experiences during meditation Overview of research on individuals experiencing higher states of consciousness published in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Today, millions of Americans say they practice some form of yoga and/or meditation. ...

Parents accidentally confuse their children's names more often when the names sound alike

2014-01-14
Parents accidentally confuse their children's names more often when the names sound alike New University of Texas at Austin research explains why parents mistakenly call their children by their sibling's -- or the family pet's -- name AUSTIN, Texas – When ...

Researchers find substantial drop in use of affirmative action in college admissions

2014-01-14
Researchers find substantial drop in use of affirmative action in college admissions WASHINGTON, D.C., January 13, 2014 - University of Washington researchers Grant H. Blume and Mark C. Long have produced the first empirical estimates using national-level ...

Researchers identify key proteins responsible for electrical communication in the heart

2014-01-14
Researchers identify key proteins responsible for electrical communication in the heart Findings shed light on the root of healthy heart function and reveal a class of drugs that can prevent erratic heartbeats tied to heart attacks, strokes and other health ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Exercise as an anti-ageing intervention to avoid detrimental impact of mental fatigue

UMass Amherst Nursing Professor Emerita honored as ‘Living Legend’

New guidelines aim to improve cystic fibrosis screening

Picky eaters by day, buffet by night: Butterfly, moth diets sync to plant aromas

Pennington Biomedical’s Dr. Leanne Redman honored with the E. V. McCollum Award from the American Society for Nutrition

CCNY physicists uncover electronic interactions mediated via spin waves

Researchers’ 3D-printing formula may transform future of foam

Nurture more important than nature for robotic hand

Drug-delivering aptamers target leukemia stem cells for one-two knockout punch

New study finds that over 95% of sponsored influencer posts on Twitter were not disclosed

New sea grant report helps great lakes fish farmers navigate aquaculture regulations

Strain “trick” improves perovskite solar cells’ efficiency

How GPS helps older drivers stay on the roads

Estrogen and progesterone stimulate the body to make opioids

Dancing with the cells – how acoustically levitating a diamond led to a breakthrough in biotech automation

Machine learning helps construct an evolutionary timeline of bacteria

Cellular regulator of mRNA vaccine revealed... offering new therapeutic options

Animal behavioral diversity at risk in the face of declining biodiversity

Finding their way: GPS ignites independence in older adult drivers

Antibiotic resistance among key bacterial species plateaus over time

‘Some insects are declining but what’s happening to the other 99%?’

Powerful new software platform could reshape biomedical research by making data analysis more accessible

Revealing capillaries and cells in living organs with ultrasound

American College of Physicians awards $260,000 in grants to address equity challenges in obesity care

Researchers from MARE ULisboa discover that the European catfish, an invasive species in Portugal, has a prolonged breeding season, enhancing its invasive potential

Rakesh K. Jain, PhD, FAACR, honored with the 2025 AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research

Solar cells made of moon dust could power future space exploration

Deporting immigrants may further shrink the health care workforce

Border region emergency medical services in migrant emergency care

Resident physician intentions regarding unionization

[Press-News.org] How fruit flies detect sweet foods
UC Riverside research opens door for investigations into taste receptors of mosquitoes and other deadly insects