From owner-drosophila@net.bio.net Mon Mar 18 22:00:00 1996 Path: biosci!rutgers!csn!news-1.csn.net!ub!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!inkblot.med.cornell.edu!mac102948.med.cornell.edu!user From: mjcann@med.cornell.edu (Martin Cann) Newsgroups: bionet.drosophila Subject: Re: Peppermint flies!!!! Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 20:53:25 -0500 Organization: Cornell University Medical College Lines: 35 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: mac102948.med.cornell.edu In article , "David M. Stack" wrote: > Hi everyone, > > > I'm an undergrad at the university of Reading, England, > and I am doing some research on D. melongaster.I am repeating an old > experiment of a man named Thorpe which involves testing the taste and > smell preferences of the flies. Will flies raised on peppermint chose a > pot of the medium in a choice chamber? Will the offspring of these flies, > when raised on a normal medium, still chose peppermint food in a choice > chamber? I would be really grateful to anyone who could send me some > information, no matter how small, large,complicated, whatever, or for any > suggestions. I think the question you are basically raising is that of a conditioned stimulus. I could be wrong but I think that you could only condition the flies to go for the peppermint if the peppermint is linked to a reward/punishment. For example, in a T-maze you may have a peppermint odour and a neutral odour, say octane. Give them five minutes to wander around and head towards one particular odour, trap them, and give the ones that choose octane a big ol' nasty electric shock. Do this enough times and they will learn to love peppermint. These kinds of experiments have been performed extensively by Tim Tully whose papers on olfactory learning in Drosophila are somewhat of a paradigm. You should find his papers on Medline but good look finding the journals. Even us in the good ol' US of A have heard about the infamous Reading University library where they organize books by size! Anyway, by experimenting in this manner you could possibly isolate mutant flies that are refractory to the detection of peppermint etc. Who knows maybe Canton S is hot for peppermint. I'd sure like to know! Martin .