15:30 - 17:00
Thu-P1
Planck Lobby & Meitner Hall
Generation and characterization of N-GFP-Orco Drosophila melanogaster fly line
Thu-P1-046
Presented by: Kalpana Jain
Kalpana Jain, Regina Stieber, Sabine Kaltofen, Bill S Hansson, Dieter Wicher
Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology Hans-Knoll-Str. 8, 07745 Jena, Germany
Insects perceive countless odors with the help of odorant receptors (ORs) expressed by olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) located in antenna and maxillary palps. OR complexes are composed of odor specific proteins OrX and olfactory co-receptor proteins Orco, both with extracellular C-terminus and intracellular N-terminus. In this study, we generated a genetically modified Drosophila melanogaster fly line that expresses green fluorescent protein (GFP) at the Orco N-terminus (UAS-N-GFP-ORCO) in Orco null mutant background (Orco1) using GAL4-UAS system. We first obtained four phenotypes for which we performed cryosectioning and immunolabeling in the antenna. In preliminary observations, we see that these fly lines have differences in OR expression patterns. Therefore we investigate the differences in fluorescence intensities from stomata and outer dendrites from the antennal cross sections. We also tested the olfactory capability of these flies using single sensillum recording (SSR). We could show that olfaction was not impaired by GFP insertion. As Orco guides OR trafficking to the OSN dendrites, we check whether insertion of GFP at the Orco N-terminus affects the trafficking. Further we want to use this transgenic fly line to resolve the structure of OR complexes using Cryo electron microscopy (cryo-EM).