Figure 5.

Effects of ablation of thecogen cells in adult flies by apoptosis on in vivo neuron responses to a panel of treatments. (A) Schematic of inducible ablation of thecogen cells by heatshocking using the GAL4/UAS system. (B) Crossing scheme used to generate control flies and thecogen cell-free adult flies. Experimental fly cohorts are split into heatshock and no heatshock conditions, as well as three genotypes, of which two are parental controls. (C) Confocal Z-stack of antennae following a 24 h and 48 h heatshock at 32°C, showing an absence of GFP signal, indicating complete absence and loss of thecogen cells following heat treatment. (D) Treatment response profile for three sensilla: a sum of spikes in all ab1 neurons excluding the D neuron, spikes of ab2A neuron, and spikes of ab3A neuron. Response profile is calculated by taking a sum total of all spikes 1 s following stimulus onset subtracted from the sum total of all spikes 1 s prior to stimulus onset. (E) Average neuron activity per second measured from a 13 s measurement window during no treatment. Units in resting spikes per second. (F) Average neuron activity per second measured from the sum total of spikes preceding stimulus onset by 1 s. Units in resting spikes per second. Two-way ANOVA with the Tukey post hoc tests were used to compare all sets of data; only some are shown. Asterisks indicate statistical significance (^nsnot significant, *p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ****p ≤ 0.0001).