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Gut microbes alter the walking activity of fruit flies

A gut bacterium has been found to modulate locomotor activity in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. This effect is mediated by the level of a sugar and the activity of neurons that produce the molecule octopamine.
  1. Angela E. Douglas

    1. Angela E. Douglas is in the Departments of Entomology and of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.

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Is the refrain that “my microbes make me do it” true? Scientific reviews and the popular press often report that microbes can influence many aspects of the behaviour of their healthy animal or human hosts, from cognition to social interactions to emotional state1. If this is true, perhaps future microbial-based therapies might be used to improve mental health. Yet the evidence for most of these claims of microbial effects is limited. Experiments are urgently needed that definitively test whether bacteria can have a causal role in behaviour, and that identify the underlying mechanisms. Writing in Nature, Schretter et al.2 provide a superb example of rigorous scientific analysis, in which they demonstrate that the walking activity of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster can be affected by a specific gut bacterium. The authors identify a bacterial enzyme that mediates this effect, and establish aspects of the mechanism by which the fruit fly responds to the bacterium.

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Nature 563, 331-332 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07080-y

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