Learning and courtship in Drosophila: two stories with mutants.

Abstract

Victorian ladies and gentlemen cultivated waltzing mice and tumbling pigeons as parlor pets. They derived mild social amusement from the inbred animals' curious behavior, unmindful of the hereditary ataxias and seizures that caused it. Present day fanciers of behavioral mutants continue to be amused by their organisms, but as biologists they are concerned above all with the etiology of curious behavior. Other things have changed as well. Simple organisms bear­ ing single gene mutations have replaced complex, inbred strains, and the emphasis is on using these new mutants to dissociate complex behaviors and the neuronal processes that underlie them. Recently, the cumulative effect of many experiments with many mutations, brought to bear on a few well-defined questions, has helped promote some of these studies from promising curiosities to coherent stories. Here we concen­ trate on two of these, in the organism we know best. In one case, mutations that perturb learning and memory in well-defined ways have led directly to the underlying biochemistry. In another, mutations and mosaics in combination with behavioral studies have resolved an ethologically complex behavior in unprecedented detail, showing the brain regions, sensory cues, and experiential determinants of many of its steps. For more comprehensive reviews, see Hall and colleagues (1982) and Hall (1982).