Taste and Feeding Response of Amino Acids in Drosophila
Naoko Toshima and Teiichi Tanimura
Division of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences
Kyushu University, Hakozaki, Fukuoka, 812-8581 Japan
For organisms, decision-making on food choice is an important ability to live a
healthy life. Animals have to take nutrients not only for survival but also for
reproduction. The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, needs to take essential amino
acids as a source for proteins especially to produce eggs. However, we do not know
how flies detect amino acids and regulate the feeding response to amino acids. We
found that flies change the taste preference and enhance the feeding behavior to amino
acids under the amino-acid-deprived condition [1]. Some of amino acids induced
proboscis extension reflex only in amino-acid-deprived flies. On the contrary poxn
mutant flies with no external taste organs preferred amino acids to a low concentration
of sugar, suggesting that the external taste sensilla are not always necessary to detect
amino acids. These data, taken together, suggest that Drosophila have amino acid
receptors in several different taste organs and might have an internal amino acid sensor
to regulate their feeding behavior depending on the internal amino acid level.
[1] Toshima, N. and Tanimura, T. Taste preference for amino acids is dependent on
internal nutritional state in Drosophila. J. Exp. Biol. 215, 2827-32 (2012)