Unlike other taste modalities, the Drosophila taste system encodes salt taste combinatorially across multiple sensory neuron classes, which combine to produce behavioural valence and plasticity.
Expression of Drosophila bitter receptors in taste neurons produced increased, decreased, or novel responses, supporting a model in which the response profile is determined by activation, inhibition, or competition among receptors.
The neural representation of perceived sucrose intensity was contained in the firing rate and spike-timing of a 'small' population of neurons distributed across the Insula and Orbitofrontal taste cortices.
The evolutionary transition of the agricultural pest Drosophila suzukii to egg laying on ripe fruits was paralleled with several gustatory innovations.
The Sip-Triggered Optogenetic Behavior Enclosure (STROBE) produces robust behaviors via activation of peripheral or central neurons in the fly, and mimics key features of feeding driven by chemical taste ligands.
The optoPAD system combines real-time behavioral analysis with optogenetic manipulations to study how animals adapt to dynamic gustatory environments and to identify the circuit basis of feeding.
The gustatory receptor PxylGr34 is tuned to the steroid plant hormone brassinolide and mediates the deterrent effects of brassinolide on feeding and ovipositing behaviors in Plutella xylostella.
Planarians provide evidence for a common evolutionary origin of vertebrate and invertebrate excretory systems and provide a novel experimental model to study human kidney diseases.
