Stress Resistance Conferred by Neuronal Expression of Dominant-Negative Rac in Adult Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Abstract: How does brain coordinate physiological and behavioral responses to achieve survival in adverse environment is intriguing yet complicated. During studies of the small G protein Rac's role in learning and memory, the authors unexpectedly observed that neuronal expression of dominant-negative Rac in adult Drosophila remarkably enhanced the survival of animals in various stress conditions, including oxidation, desiccation, starvation, and heat. The elevated stress resistance was not accompanied by a reduction in female fecundity or a change in whole-body lipid storage. The observation therefore implies the involvement of small G protein Rac in neuronal regulation of global stress responses.

Keywords::

• Drosophila
• Rac
• stress resistance

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Bloomington Stock Center for fly strains, and Chunsu Xu and Areekul Sodsiri for helpful comments on the manuscript.

Declaration of interest: This work was supported by grants from “973 program” (2006CB500806 and 2009CB941301) to Y.Z. The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.