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. 2023 Mar 1;18(3):e0282348. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0282348

Fig 3. Flies that express Sph-1 in the serotonergic system are hyperactive at day 1 post-eclosion and Sph-1 expression in the dopaminergic system causes age related motility loss.

Fig 3

Activity (A), distance traveled (B), and speed (C), three motor parameters, are differentially affected by Sph-1 expression in dopaminergic, serotonergic, or both aminergic populations. D) At day 1 post-eclosion, flies that express Sph-1 show hyperactivity and have an enhanced climbing reflex (negative geotaxis). E) Chronic nicotine treatment (24 μM) for 40 days reduces the climbing ability of control flies (UAS-Sph-1/+; +). Sph-1 expression in the dopaminergic neurons (UAS-Sph-1/+; UAS-th-GAL4/+ and UAS-Sph-1/+; UAS-ddc-GAL4/+) also decreases climbing ability. However, chronic nicotine treatment significantly rescues this phenotype; this nicotine-induced effect is not observed in flies that express Sph-1 only in the serotonergic system (UAS-Sph-1/+; UAS-tph-GAL4/+). Significance was tested using two-way ANOVAs followed by a Tukey post-hoc test, n = 40. Asterisks indicate significance between the Sph-1 non-expressing control and the untreated Sph-1 expressing flies, hashtags (#) show significance between nicotine-treated and untreated flies; * = P < 0.05, ** = P < 0.01, *** = P < 0.001, **** = P < 0.0001, ns = not significant, #### = P < 0.001.