Abstract
Our lab’s goal is to investigate gene by environment interactions and their impacts on the severity and prevalence of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), something which currently afflicts 1 in 6 individuals in the United States. We use Drosophila melanogaster—the common fruit fly—as a model organism because there are many disease-associated genes that have functional orthologs in flies such as Fragile X Mental Retardation 1(FMR1/dfmr1). Mutations in FMR1 are the most common, monogenic cause of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a NDD. In fact, up to 50% of individuals with mutations in the FMR1 gene are also diagnosed with ASD. An environmental chemical of interest in our lab is polychlorinated biphenyl 95 (PCB-95), which in previous studies using vertebrate models has been linked to a significantly increased risk of ASD. Our study aims to evaluate differences in genetically programmed courtship behaviors as well as to investigate axon pathfinding within the mushroom body, a neural structure in the adult Drosophila brain associated with learning and memory. Our results demonstrate a significant decrease in the courtship index (CI) of wild-type and dfmr1 Drosophila exposed to PCB-95 in addition to a dose-dependent increase in the levels of axon pathfinding defects in the mushroom bodies of wild-type Drosophila exposed to PCB-95. Overall, this data supports the use of Drosophila as an efficient tool to screen for other chemicals that may potentially enhance FMR1-associated deficits.