Drosophila Egg-Laying Preference Assay: A Method to Test Decision-Making in Flies
Published: April 30, 2023
Abstract
Source: Gou, B., et al. High Throughput Assay to Examine Egg-Laying Preferences of Individual Drosophila melanogaster. J. Vis. Exp. (2016).
Drosophila females choose between substrates and select sites that are attractive for egg-laying. This video describes a behavioral assay that tests their decision-making, called the egg-laying preference assay. The featured clip demonstrates the procedure with a custom-built setup, which enables researchers not only to test the behavior of many females at the same time but is also compatible with video recording and optogenetic setups.
Protocol
This protocol is an excerpt from Gou et al., High Throughput Assay to Examine Egg-Laying Preferences of Individual Drosophila melanogaster, J. Vis. Exp. (2016). 1. Chamber Construction, Assembly, Assay Setup Have a machine shop build acrylic egg-laying chambers (Figure 1A-D). The engineering drawing of different pieces were shown in Supplementary Figure 1-3. High…
Representative Results
Figure 1: Egg-laying Chambers and Egg-laying Protocol. (A) Fully assembled egg -laying chamber. (B) Disassembled pieces. a: the loading piece (top), b: the divider piece (middle), c: the substrate (bottom) piece. Engineering drawings of these pieces are shown in Supplementary Figure 1-3. (C) The loading piece of the chamber. a': sliding doors, a&…
Materials
| UltraPure Agarose | Invitrogen | 16500-500 | |
| Sucrose | Sigma | S0389 | |
| Water bath | Fisher | 15-462-6Q | |
| Egg-laying chambers | Custom Built | ||
| Fly vials (narrow) | Genesee | 32-116BC |
