Messing with fruit flies’ gut bacteria turns them into speed walkers
The result suggests that microbes in the gut may affect how the brain controls movement
Researchers have found a new link between gut and brain.
By signaling to nerve cells in the brain, certain microbes in the gut slow a fruit fly’s walking pace, scientists report. Fruit flies missing those microbes — and that signal — turn into hyperactive speed walkers.
With the normal suite of gut microbes, Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies on foot cover an average of about 2.4 millimeters a second. But fruit flies without any gut microbes zip along at about 3.5 millimeters a second, Catherine Schretter, a biologist at Caltech, and her colleagues report October 24 in Nature. These flies with missing microbes also take shorter breaks and are more active during the day.