View Program - 63rd Annual Drosophila Research Conference

The Toll family of receptors possess a number of critical functions in Drosophila, including roles in development and immunity. Recently, our group has begun looking for behavioral roles for the Toll family of receptors in the nervous system, given a breadth of expression in the adult nervous system. We hypothesize that Toll receptors function as an immune sensors in neurons to communicate immune challenge and infection and triggers behavioral responses for sickness behaviors in Drosophila. We will present our findings primarily on Toll1 and Toll7 with regards to sleep and feeding behaviors and their potential relationship to immune state when challenged by Metarhizium anisopliae, entomopathic fungi known to trigger robust responses from the Toll1 pathway. We will also share behavioral characterization of sleep and feeding behaviors for wild type animals exposed to M. anisopliae. We believe that immune sensors in the nervous system are essential for coordinating immune-behavioral responses in both sensing presence of pathogens as well as circuit-specific responses during chronic illness.

Toll Family Receptor Function in Neuronal Recognition of Immune State