PgmNr D1291: A wing damage screen identifies novel genes affecting Drosophila aggression.

Authors:
S. Davis; A. Thomas; L. Liu; I. Campbell; H. Dierick


Institutes
Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX.


Keyword: aggression

Abstract:

Aggressive behavior is widespread throughout the animal kingdom as a means to compete for territory, food, and mates. Fighting animals can benefit from these encounters but also run the risk to lose resources, and they may incur physical damage and even risk death. While aggression is part of the normal repertoire of complex behaviors for many animals, excessive aggression also occurs in many human neurological and psychiatric disorders. The molecular and neuronal mechanisms underlying this trait in health and disease remain largely unknown. The identification of novel genes that regulate aggression through a forward genetic screen has so far never been attempted in any organism because the complex nature of the behavior makes screening prohibitively time consuming. We circumvented this challenge when we discovered a positive correlation between aggression and physical wing damage in male flies that were group-housed. Using this easy-to-screen wing damage phenotype we performed the first chemical mutagenesis screen to isolate mutants with increased aggression. After screening ~1,400 EMS induced X-chromosome mutants for increased wing damage, we found 5 lines that also had increased aggression. Using whole-genome sequencing, meiotic mapping, and genomic duplication rescues, we identified the causal mutation in 2 of these strains. These novel mutants likely affect neuronal excitability and gene regulation, although the mechanisms through which they function remain unknown.. This aggression-induced wing damage screening approach can also be applied to other chromosomes to further identify novel genes regulating this behavior in flies and may also provide insight into human aggression.