In Drosophila, heat shock (HS) during the pupal stage chronically hinders adult locomotor performance by disrupting wing development and cellular and/or tissue-level mechanisms that support walking and flight. Furthermore, heat pretreatment (PT) protects locomotor function against the impact of these disruptions. HS flies with abnormal wings were less able to alter trajectory in free fall relative to control, PT-only and PT+HS wild-type flies. This deficit was less severe but still present in HS-only flies with wild-type wings. Transgenic increases in the copy number of the genes encoding the major inducible heat shock protein of D. melanogaster, Hsp70, also protect walking ability from disruption due to pupal HS. Walking velocity did not differ between excision (5 hsp70 copies) and extra-copy (11 hsp70 copies) flies in the control, PT and PT+HS groups, nor did velocity vary among these treatment groups. However, HS dramatically reduced walking velocity, but the effect of HS was confined primarily to the excision flies. These results suggest that Hsp70 expression ability and other mechanisms confer basal and PT-inducible protection against heat-induced locomotor impairment.
Species 1: Diptera Drosophilidae Drosophila melanogaster (Fruit fly)
Keywords: heat-injury, Hsp70
Back to Ten-Minute Papers, Section B. Physiology, Biochemistry, Toxicology, and Molecular Biology
Back to Ten-Minute Papers, Section B. Physiology, Biochemistry, Toxicology, and Molecular Biology
Back to The 2002 ESA Annual Meeting and Exhibition