Gene caused male flies to vomit 'wedding gifts' for female flies

Drosophila fruit flies subobscura perform special courtship rites thanks to a gene called Fru.

Neurobiologists discovered common genes that affect mating rituals in two species of fruit flies, though jumping and vomiting behaviors to attract mates only appear in one species, Newsweek reported on November 6. .

In Drosophila subobscura fruit flies , males when seducing females will perform a flirtatious dance accompanied by "wedding gifts". This gift is the vomit of a male fly so that the female can taste and decide if the male is suitable.

The nerve circuit that governs this behavior involves a gene called Fru . This gene also affects mating behavior of Drosophila melanogaster, although they do not perform ritual ritual.

Daisuke Yamamoto, a molecular biologist at Tokyo University, and colleagues studied fruit flies to see if they could create a mechanism for mating them."The males lost consciousness but still vomited a" gift "when the appropriate neural circuit was coerced to activate, although there was no partner there," Yamamoto told Newsweek.

Male flies lacking the Fru gene do not perform such flirtatious behaviors. When the research team activated nerve circuits by light, the flies were forced to perform courtship rites, but still followed the species characteristics.

Genetic modification techniques allow scientists to avoid some of the problems that many similar studies had previously encountered."Most researchers now use only sample organisms to do experiments because they are easy to use, but this makes it difficult to understand species-specific behaviors and brain anatomy , " the researchers said. Science Ryoya Tanaka explained.

Males when seducing females will perform a flirtatious dance accompanied by "wedding gifts".

"The new study addresses these problems by altering the genome of a non-traditional model organism, using tools that allow us to control neural activity, and then compare it with a transfusion model organism. This also helps us compare neural circuits between model organisms and normal organisms to determine where and how specific behavioral behaviors emerge , " Tanaka added.

The new study could also be used in pest control for agriculture. If we prevent mating behavior by adding some safe human chemicals to food that the flies eat, we can reduce the number of flies, Yamamoto commented.