Figure 1. Development of the mild TBI model in Drosophila.

(a) Male wild-type flies (1-week of age) were subjected to different injury intensities (5-second) using the Omni Bead Ruptor-24 and the number of dead flies (n ≥ 3; cohorts of 50 flies) was used to establish the 24 hour post-injury mortality. (b) Male flies (1-week of age) were subjected to multiple 5-second injury bouts at lower intensity settings and used to establish 24 hour post-injury mortality for multi-bout injuries (n ≥ 3; cohorts of 50 flies). (c) Representative images of flies following injury highlighting external damage to wing structures (red arrows). (d) The climbing index of groups of male wild-type control flies and flies subjected to a single sTBI (1×, 4.35 m/s intensity) or 10× mTBI (2.1 m/s intensity) injury bouts (1-week of age; cohorts of 25 flies; n ≥ 6). (e) Lifespan profiles of male wild-type control flies and flies subjected to 1× (4.35 m/s intensity), 5× or 10× (2.1 m/s intensity) injury bout(s) at 1-week of age (n ≥ 59, arrow indicates time of injury). The bracket highlights the 2-week delay in mortality in flies exposed to mTBI. See Materials and Methods for clarification of the injury protocol and Supplementary Table S1 for additional lifespan data and statistics. *P < 0.05.