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| Poster #126 Characterizing the sensorimotor transformation in Drosophila olfactory system in response to naturalistic stimuli |
| Samuel P Wechsler & Vikas Bhandawat Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, United States |
Odors modulate locomotion in diverse ways, changing based on concentration, exposure duration and identity. The volatility and transience of odors make them hard to control, making it a challenge to study sensorimotor transformations. Using a circular arena with a vacuum-pulled central odor zone, we precisely controlled odor delivery to flies while describing behavior (Jung et al., 2015). To characterize the transformation between olfactory receptor neuron (ORN) activity and behavior, we replace the odor zone with a fixed-intensity light zone to optogenetically replicate the fly’s sensory experience during behavior in an electrophysiological rig. Using this framework, we previously obtained the relationship between a group of ORNs activated by a strong attractant, apple cider vinegar and the resulting locomotor changes (Tao et al., 2024). Here, we apply the same experimental approach to investigate how a repellant ORN, Or7a, affects fly locomotion. Furthermore, we assess the role of the second-order projection neuron (PN) downstream of Or7a. These experiments utilize dual binary expression to simultaneously activate ORNs while inactivating or performing in-vivo whole-cell patch clamp recordings from PNs. We find that Or7a ORN activation produces repellant behavior that is surprisingly exacerbated with the PN signal removal. Our work looks to further understand how fly behavior is affected by this repellant glomerulus’ activation and the role PNs play in influencing these ORN-mediated locomotor changes. Our data provides new insights into the nature of sensorimotor transformations in the context of naturalistic odor stimulus by providing a comparative description of behavioral changes for a motor program that is independent from the previously described strong attractant-influenced behavior. |