Abstract
The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is a powerful genetic model that has been used for many decades to study nervous system function, development, and behavior. There are a large number of developmental and behavioral traits that can be measured to provide a broad readout of neurological function. These include patterned motor behaviors, such as larval locomotion, which can be used to assess whether genetic or environmental factors affect nervous system function to provide an entry point for deeper mechanistic studies. Here, we describe a protocol for quantifying larval locomotion using a simple camera setup and a freely available image analysis software. This protocol can be readily applied to human disease models or in toxicology studies, for example, to broadly assess the impact of treatments on neurological function.
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© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
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Lin, J., Mele, S., Piper, M.D.W., Johnson, T.K. (2024). A Simple Method for Quantifying Larval Locomotion in Drosophila melanogaster. In: Dworkin, S. (eds) Neurobiology. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2746. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3585-8_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3585-8_8
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Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-3584-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-3585-8
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