Modification of CO2 avoidance behaviour in Drosophila by inhibitory odorants

Stephanie Lynn Turner and Anandasankar Ray ()
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Stephanie Lynn Turner: Cellular, Molecular, and Developmental Biology Program,
Anandasankar Ray: University of California, Riverside, California 92521, USA

Nature, 2009, vol. 461, issue 7261, 277-281

Abstract: Fruitflies' carbon dioxide avoidance suppressed Fruitflies instinctively avoid CO2, for example that produced by stressed fellow flies, but they overcome this innate repulsion when CO2 is combined with other odorants, such as those produced by ripening fruits. Stephanie Turner and Anandasankar Ray report that such behaviour-modifying food odorants act directly on CO2-sensitive neurons in the fly antenna — not, as one would expect, indirectly via other olfactory pathways. Other naturally occurring odorants also blocked the action of CO2-responsive neurons from Culex mosquitoes, the insect vector for West Nile virus and filariasis. Given that these insects are drawn to CO2 emitted in human breath, these inhibitors of mosquito CO2-sensitive neurons could aid the search for repellent drugs that work by blocking this pathway.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1038/nature08295

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