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The foraging gene in Drosophila melanogaster, which encodes a cGMP-dependent protein kinase, is a highly conserved, complex gene with multiple pleiotropic behavioral and physiological functions in both the larval and adult fly. Adult foraging expression is less well characterized than in the larva. We characterized foraging expression in the brain, gastric system, and reproductive systems using a T2A-Gal4 gene-trap allele. In the brain, foraging expression appears to be restricted to multiple sub-types of glia. This glial-specific cellular localization of foraging was supported by single-cell transcriptomic atlases of the adult brain. foraging is extensively expressed in most cell types in the gastric and reproductive systems. We then mapped multiple cis-regulatory elements responsible for parts of the observed expression patterns by a nested cloned promoter-Gal4 analysis. The mapped cis-regulatory elements were consistently modular when comparing the larval and adult expression patterns. These new data using the T2A-Gal4 gene-trap and cloned foraging promoter fusion GAL4's are discussed with respect to previous work using an anti-FOR antibody, which we show here to be non-specific. Future studies of foraging's function will consider roles for glial subtypes and peripheral tissues (gastric and reproductive systems) in foraging's pleiotropic behavioral and physiological effects.

Original publication

DOI

10.1080/01677063.2021.1941946

Type

Journal article

Journal

J Neurogenet

Publication Date

09/2021

Volume

35

Pages

192 - 212

Keywords

Drosophila melanogaster, cis-regulatory element, expression, foraging gene, pleiotropy, promoter analysis, Animals, Brain, Cyclic GMP-Dependent Protein Kinases, Drosophila Proteins, Drosophila melanogaster, Genitalia, Stomach, Transcriptome