Fig. 6.

Glutamate metabolism in ensheathing glia fine tunes larval locomotion. The function of the following genes required for the glutamate–glutamine cycle was silenced in ensheathing glia (R83E12-Gal4): shopper, Eaat1, Gs2, gb, Got2, and Gdh, while GFP^dsRNA expression served as control. The neuronal side of the cycle was probed by suppression of Glutaminase and vGlut using nsyb-Gal4. shopper and GFP expression were silenced as controls. a Bending rates: suppression of enzymes of the glutamate–glutamine cycle in ensheathing glia or neurons causes significantly elevated head bending. Note the neuronal knockdown of shopper does not alter head bending. Silencing of vGlut results in a moderate increase of head bending frequency only. b Box plots showing the distance to origin covered by larvae of the genotype indicated. c, d Box plots showing the peristalsis frequency and efficacy reveal statistically significant differences in peristalsis for all genes encoding enzymes acting in the glutamate–glutamine cycle. Note that suppression of Eaat1 and Gdh affects bending rates and peristalsis most strongly. Box plots represent the first and third quartile as well as the median. Whiskers contain values within 1.5 times of the interquartile range, and outliers are marked as red crosses, ****p < 0.001, n.s.: not significant, Wilcoxon rank-sum test. Due to space limitation please find detailed statistical data in Supplementary Table 1