Figure 7.

w¹¹¹⁸ mutants have increased levels of 5-HT within their heads. (a) 5-HT levels normalized against extracted protein concentrations are shown. Wildtype Canton-S (w⁺) and w¹¹¹⁸ mutant flies were treated with vehicle or 20 mM α-methyl-tryptophan (αMeW) for 40 h. In vehicle-fed flies, 5-HT was significantly higher in the w¹¹¹⁸ mutants compared to wildtype flies (two-way ANOVA, Adj. R² = 0.891, F_3,20 = 63.549, p < 0.0001; Tukey post hoc for genotype, p < 0.01; n = 6). Additionally, αMeW significantly lowered the amount of 5-HT in the heads of both wildtype and w¹¹¹⁸ mutants (Tukey post hoc for treatment, p < 0.0001); (b) wildtype Canton-S (w⁺) and w¹¹¹⁸ mutant flies were fed vehicle or 20 mM αMeW and trained with a single trial. Acquisition in vehicle-fed wildtype and w¹¹¹⁸ mutants were significantly different, however there was no effect of αMeW treatment on one-trial learning (two-way ANOVA, Adj. R² = 0.519, F_3,36 = 15.05, p < 0.0001; Tukey post hoc, p < 0.05; n = 10). In panels a and b, groups that do not share letters above the box plots are significantly different from each other according to the Tukey post hoc test (p < 0.05).