Grant: Operating Grant

The sense of taste plays a critical role in determining what animals decide to eat. For example, sweet taste guides us towards calorie-rich sources of carbohydrates and bitter taste steers us away from potential toxins. While this drive for calories evolved as an effective survival strategy, it has created an increasing problem for modern human populations - obesity. Understanding the mechanisms by which the brain processes taste information and controls feeding behaviour is an important step in developing strategies to control food intake and prevent obesity and its associated diseases. These mechanisms are not understood in any animal. Our work uses the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, a well established and powerful genetic model system, to investigate the neural pathways controlling taste perception and feeding behaviour. We use the fly because the size of its brain is more manageable (about 1 million times fewer neurons than ours), and because decades of research have established unparalleled genetic tools for investigating the neurons and genes that control behaviour. Moreover, flies and humans share remarkable similarities in how they process information from their environment, suggesting that what we learn in flies will help us understand our own brains. The studies proposed here will provide insight into the complex question of how neurons and genes interact in the fly brain to guide their decisions on what - and how much - to eat. In the long-term, we would like to understand whether similar systems operate in mammals, and how they contribute to food consumption and obesity.