Learning and memory in Drosophila, studied with mutants.

Abstract

Ten years ago, impressed with the power of genetics applied to straight molecular biology, we set out to study learning using single-gene mutations. We were attracted to this problem in part because of its humanistic interest and in part because the similarity of learning phenomenology across species suggested some simplicity and universality for the underlying mechanism. In retrospect, our approach seems very naive, and perhaps we deserved to flounder. Nevertheless, luck has been with us. Learning-deficient mutants were isolated, and several of them turned out to have well-defined biochemical lesions. These lesions tied in with a mechanistic model formulated to explain nonassociative learning in another organism, Aplysia. Behavioral and biochemical analyses of the mutants together with other work indicate that monoamine-activated cAMP responses are involved in several types of learning in different species.