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. 1973 Apr;70(4):1050–1054. doi: 10.1073/pnas.70.4.1050

Neurophysiology of Flight in Wild-Type and a Mutant Drosophila

Jon D Levine 1,*, Robert J Wyman 1
PMCID: PMC433423  PMID: 4197927

Abstract

We report the flight motor output pattern in Drosophila melanogaster and the neural network responsible for it, and describe the bursting motor output pattern in a mutant. There are 26 singly-innervated muscle fibers. There are two basic firing patterns: phase progression, shown by units that receive a common input but have no cross-connections, and phase stability, in which synergic units, receiving a common input and inhibiting each other, fire in a repeating sequence.

Flies carrying the mutation stripe cannot fly. Their motor output is reduced to a short duration, high-frequency burst, but the patterning within bursts shows many of the characteristics of the wild type. The mutation is restricted in its effect, as the nervous system has normal morphology by light microscopy and other behaviors of the mutant are normal.

Keywords: motor output pattern, neural network, motor neuron, stripe

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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