Abstract
Front cover: Background: Alcohol abuse disorders are associated with adverse neurological symptoms and neurotoxicity. However, despite being one of the most commonly abused substances, the physiological effects of ethanol are not well defined. Main finding: By combining Drosophila, an ideal system for modelling ethanol disorders given their strong homology with mammals and natural response to ethanol, with high spatiotemporal resolution live-imaging of vesicle motility, we found that acute, low doses of ethanol result in increased flux of fluorescently-labeled neuropeptide vesicles toward neuromuscular junctions. Pharmacological treatments to increase (wortmannin) or decrease (LiCl) active GSK-3 levels revealed that GSK-3 is critical in mediating this stimulatory effect of ethanol. Implications: These results yield novel insight into the neurophysiological effects of ethanol and provide a possible link between behavioral responses to ethanol and neuropeptide transport. Image content: Time (y axis, 30 seconds) versus distance (x axis, 90 μm) graph of real-time movement of GFP-tagged neuropeptide vesicles in living Drosophila larvae. The reduced vesicle motility by wortmannin feeding is partially rescued by acute treatment with low dose ethanol. Read the full article ‘Ethanol stimulates the in vivo axonal movement of neuropeptide dense-core vesicles in Drosophila motor neurons’ by G. J. Iacobucci and S. Gunawardena (J. Neurochem. 2018, vol. 144(4), pp. 466–482) on doi: 10.1111/jnc.14230
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
