| Description |
A fly landing on a ripe banana negotiates multiple sensory-inputs--from odors, its landscape, sounds, the wind, your swatter--and makes an exquisite landing. The animal's ability to deal with the real-world is assembled before it emerges from its pupal case, raising the natural question about how this developmental sophistication is achieved. Paring a behaviour, we study how each unit is made and connected to create a coordinated marvel. Regional specialization is one unit of examination: What, for example, makes the flight system different from the walking. At the next level, specialized cell-types can be examined. At the final step, we examine how the units, sense organs nerves, muscles and tendons, connect to make a circuit that behaves. At each level of examination genes are indispensable scalpels telling us the identity, function, and placement of nuts, bolts and glue in the process of regional-, cellular- and circuit specialization. In my talk today, I will first introduce how animal behaviour emerges from the earliest stages of development and then focus on telling you about very new results on how the development, anatomy and function of neuronal stem cell lineages in the brain of the fly is important for modulating specific behavioural responses. |
| Organised by | Dr. Satyanarayana Bheesette |